Sinfonia Lahti has named Nil Venditti its next chief conductor, from the 2027-28 season. She was thirty-one when the appointment was announced, and she was a cellist first. It is not her first chief conductorship: her management, HarrisonParrott, listed her on 24 September 2026 as chief conductor of the CRR Istanbul Symphony Orchestra, a post Anadolu Agency reported in October 2024 that she had taken up for the 2024-25 season.
Her own reaction, in the orchestra's announcement, runs to three paragraphs. It includes the line "I'm excited about the music, the laughter and the long road ahead".
The announcement also contains something more useful, and it is the reason this is worth more than a paragraph.
The number that makes it a job
Sinfonia Lahti has published the shape of the contract: three years, with an option for two further years, and a minimum of six performing weeks a year.
That last clause is the one that matters. A chief conductorship is a title. What makes it a job is how many weeks the person is actually in the building, and here the orchestra has said what the minimum is.
Multiply it out and the contract has a floor.
| Guaranteed term | 3 years |
| Minimum weeks a year | 6 |
| Floor over the guaranteed term | 18 performing weeks |
| If the option is taken up | 5 years, floor of 30 weeks |
Eighteen weeks over three years is the least she can do and still have met the contract. Thirty over five if it runs its full course. Those are floors, not forecasts, and the option may never be exercised, which is why this piece gives both figures rather than the flattering one.
Lahti has put numbers on its podium posts before. When it extended the contract of Dalia Stasevska, its previous chief conductor, in March 2023, it said she would conduct five season concert weeks in the extra year besides the Sibelius Festival; when it named Hannu Lintu artistic partner in January 2024, it said he would conduct four concert weeks a year in Lahti (Cadenza's translations of the orchestra's Finnish releases). When Cadenza checked her management's page on 24 September 2026, it listed her as principal guest conductor of the Royal Northern Sinfonia as well as chief conductor in Istanbul. The value of Lahti publishing the six-week floor is that a reader can see the shape of the commitment instead of guessing at it.
Second, not first
When she takes up the post in the 2027-28 season, Venditti will not be the orchestra's first female chief conductor. Sinfonia Lahti's own Orchestra page says that for several decades its chief conductors have been Osmo Vänskä, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Okko Kamu, Dima Slobodeniouk and, most recently, Dalia Stasevska, whose four-year term ended in spring 2025. Wikipedia's list of the orchestra's chief conductors, which begins in 1951, names no woman before Stasevska and records her as the first.
Dalia Stasevska was Sinfonia Lahti's first female chief conductor. Venditti, from the 2027-28 season, will be its second. That is still worth saying, because an orchestra appointing a second woman to the post is evidence of something more durable than an orchestra appointing a first.
Two in six
The list the orchestra publishes is worth counting, because the count is the more interesting fact.
| # | Chief conductor |
|---|---|
| 1 | Osmo Vänskä |
| 2 | Jukka-Pekka Saraste |
| 3 | Okko Kamu |
| 4 | Dima Slobodeniouk |
| 5 | Dalia Stasevska |
| 6 | Nil Venditti, from 2027-28 |
Five names in the orchestra's own list, and Venditti makes six. Two of the six are women, a third, and neither of the orchestra's English-language appointment announcements, for Stasevska in 2020 and for Venditti in 2026, mentions gender.
It is also worth noting what the list does not contain. The orchestra's sentence begins "For several decades", and Wikipedia names four earlier chief conductors, from Martti Similä in 1951 to Ulf Söderblom, whom Vänskä succeeded in 1988. The sequence should be read as the line the orchestra presents rather than as a complete institutional history stretching back to the orchestra's founding in 1910.
The more useful comparison is with the two appointments either side of it. Stasevska served four years. Venditti has three guaranteed with two optional. An orchestra that has now given consecutive chief conductorships to women in their thirties when appointed is, on Cadenza's reading, running a different recruitment strategy from one that waits for a name.
The gap she is filling
Stasevska's contract ran to 31 July 2025. Venditti starts with the 2027-28 season. When Cadenza checked the orchestra's Orchestra page on 25 September 2026, it named no chief conductor after Stasevska; when the orchestra named Hannu Lintu artistic partner in January 2024, it said his post would not replace the chief conductor's.
The orchestra's Orchestra page, read on 25 September 2026, says Lintu took up the role of artistic partner in autumn 2025, which is a different title carrying different obligations, and the artistic directorship of the orchestra's International Sibelius Festival. Venditti's appointment does not include that festival role.
Cadenza is not going to print an exact length for the vacancy. The orchestra's announcement of 18 September 2026 says only that Venditti will take up the position "at the beginning of the 2027/28 season", so any precise figure would be invented. What can be said is that the gap runs to roughly two years, with a named artistic partner who took up the role in autumn 2025.
Lintu opened the Singapore Symphony's season on 17 July 2026 as its new music director, with Mahler's Fifth.
Who she is
Venditti was born in Perugia in 1994, to an Italian father and a Turkish mother. She trained as a cellist before she conducted.
Two reviews give a sense of how critics have heard her.
Bernard Hughes, reviewing her 2024 Proms debut with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for The Arts Desk, gave four stars. He wrote that he had "some mixed feelings" about the Welsh composers' pieces in the first half: Grace Williams's Concert Overture "soon ran out of steam", and the last two movements of Karl Jenkins's Stravaganza "outstayed their welcome a little". In his paragraph on the overture he wrote that Venditti "was full of vigour but I was unconvinced it was in a completely worthwhile cause". Of the scherzo and finale of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony he wrote that she was "threatening at times to overdo it, but never actually letting it get out of hand", and the symphony finished "with Venditti triumphant". Two years later, in August 2026, Bachtrack gave her Prom of Respighi's Church Windows and Rossini's Stabat Mater with the BBC Symphony Orchestra five stars, though that review sits behind a paywall and Cadenza could read only its public headline and standfirst, so it is reported here as a rating rather than quoted.
What the orchestra said
The orchestra's board chairman, Vesa Lehtinen, and its general manager, Maija Kylkilahti, both spoke in the announcement. Lehtinen acknowledged her expertise but put the weight on how she works with players: the orchestra, he said, particularly values her open, collaborative approach to working with the musicians. Kylkilahti called her one of the most interesting and sought-after conductors of the current era, citing her energy and musicality.
Cadenza is paraphrasing both rather than quoting them, because the full wording sits in the orchestra's own announcement and this newsroom would rather send a reader there than lift a sentence imprecisely.
Before the title, guest dates
This appointment followed guest conducting. The orchestra's announcement says that in her recent engagements with it she made a strong impression on orchestra and audiences alike. She first appeared with it in the 2023/24 season, in a concert her management listed for 12 October 2023, and the orchestra's own site announced her return for 30 October 2025.
Cadenza carries conducting posts, auditions and schemes with open deadlines, free to musicians, on its jobs board and its competitions board.
If you want to hear the orchestra before 2027. Sinfonia Lahti streams its own concerts through SL ClassicLive, whose page, read on 25 September 2026, invites viewers to enjoy the orchestra's concerts for free. The orchestra says it was the first orchestra in the world to start regular concert broadcasts online, at the ClassicLive website in 2007; its own SL ClassicLive app followed in spring 2021. The 2027-28 season will be Venditti's first as chief, and the orchestra's site offers a newsletter and season brochure.
The question is one every orchestra announcement invites. Lahti published the floor under its new chief conductor's weeks. How many other orchestras appointing a chief in 2026 will say how many weeks they have actually bought?
Sources: Sinfonia Lahti's own announcement of the appointment, which carries Venditti's quoted words, the three-year term with an option for two further years, the minimum of six performing weeks a year, the 2027-28 start and the remarks by Vesa Lehtinen and Maija Kylkilahti that are paraphrased above; and the orchestra's own Orchestra page, which names its chief conductors of several decades as Osmo Vänskä, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Okko Kamu, Dima Slobodeniouk and Dalia Stasevska, whose four-year term ended in spring 2025. Hannu Lintu's artistic partner role and his artistic directorship of the Sibelius Festival are from the same source. The earlier chief conductors, and Stasevska's place as the first woman in the post, are from Wikipedia's article on the orchestra. Stasevska's contract end date of 31 July 2025 and her five concert weeks in that final year are from the orchestra's Finnish release of March 2023; Lintu's four concert weeks a year, and the statement that his post does not replace the chief conductor's, from its Finnish release of January 2024. Venditti's Istanbul and Royal Northern Sinfonia posts are from her management's biography and an Anadolu Agency report of 18 October 2024; her first Lahti concert from HarrisonParrott's news item of 29 September 2023, and her October 2025 return from the orchestra's concert preview. Lintu's Singapore opening is from Bachtrack's review of the 17 July 2026 concert. Bernard Hughes's four-star review is in The Arts Desk and was read in full; the five-star Bachtrack rating of her August 2026 Prom, of Respighi's Church Windows and Rossini's Stabat Mater, is reported as a rating because the review itself is paywalled.
The figures of 18 and 30 performing weeks are Cadenza's arithmetic from the published contract terms. No exact length is given for the vacancy between Stasevska and Venditti because, although Stasevska's contract ended on 31 July 2025, the start of Venditti's tenure is not fixed to a published calendar date.
Correction, 24 September 2026: an earlier version of this article said this was Venditti's first chief conductorship; her management lists her as chief conductor of the CRR Istanbul Symphony Orchestra. It also said several accounts had called her the orchestra's first female chief conductor; Cadenza found no such account in the coverage it checked on 24 September 2026 and has removed that claim. It described Bernard Hughes's reservation as being about Venditti's account of the Grace Williams overture; it was about the piece. It gave Bachtrack's five-star rating to her Stabat Mater alone; the rating is for the whole Prom, which also included Respighi's Church Windows. It said the orchestra's own list of chief conductors had six names; it has five, and Venditti is the sixth. It gave Venditti's reaction as nine words; the quoted line is part of a three-paragraph statement.
Correction, 25 September 2026: the earlier version also said Vesa Lehtinen's emphasis was not on Venditti's technique and that the board valued her way of working with the orchestra; he spoke of the orchestra appreciating her considerable expertise and particularly valuing her open, collaborative approach to working with the musicians. It said Sinfonia Lahti's own history showed that Dalia Stasevska was its first female chief conductor; the orchestra's Orchestra page, read on 25 September 2026, does not say so, and that statement is Wikipedia's. It dated SL ClassicLive to 2007; the orchestra dates its regular online broadcasts at the ClassicLive website to 2007 and its own SL ClassicLive app to spring 2021. It said the service was available from anywhere, which Cadenza could not verify; that phrase has been removed.
Cover photograph: The Sibelius Hall in Lahti, home of Sinfonia Lahti, photographed in July 2021. Photo: kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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