Canadian conductor and pianist Naomi Woo is a widely sought-after symphonic and operatic conductor and educator. Assistant conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra, where her duties include assisting Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin as well as other guest conductors and leading the Orchestra in select concerts, she is also music director of NYO Canada and artistic partner of the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal.
In the 2024–25 season, Ms. Woo makes debuts with The Philadelphia Orchestra, London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony, the Luxembourg Chamber Orchestra, and the Royal Conservatory Orchestra in Toronto. Return engagements include the Toronto Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic, the Vancouver Symphony, and the Orchestre Métropolitain.
Highlights of her 2023–24 season include her first tour and recordings with NYO Canada; conducting engagements with the Orchestre Métropolitain, the Montreal Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, and the Chautauqua Symphony; and leading opera productions with English Touring Opera and Opera Holland Park in the United Kingdom.
Ms. Woo’s previous season engagements include the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic, the Ann Arbor Symphony, Orchestra NOW (New York), the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and Regina Symphony, and her debut at LSO St. Luke’s in London with the ensemble Tangram Sound. She was assistant conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony from 2019 to 2023 and appeared with that orchestra on multiple occasions. On the opera stage, she has conducted the Canadian premiere of Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Angel’s Bone in Vancouver and the world premiere of Ellis Ludwig-Leone’s The Night Falls in New York City. In 2022 she assisted in the world premiere of Oliver Leith’s Last Days at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and return to assist Thomas Adès with the same work for its United States premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The 2022 winner of the Canada Council’s prestigious Virginia Parker Prize, Ms. Woo is a member of Tapestry Opera’s Women in Musical Leadership program and was chosen by her mentor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, as a member of the Orchestre Métropolitain’s inaugural orchestral conducting academy.
Ms. Woo holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She also studied mathematics, philosophy, and music at Yale College, the Yale School of Music, and the University of Montreal.