Joana Carneiro

Joana Carneiro (born Joana Maria Amaro da Costa da Luz Carneiro; 30 September 1976 in Lisbon), is a Portuguese conductor.

Family

Joana Carneiro is the third of the nine children of the former Portuguese Minister of Education Roberto Carneiro. She is a niece of the Portuguese politician Adelino Amaro da Costa.

As a youth, Carneiro played the viola. In Portugal, Carneiro studied music at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon, where she attended the class of Jean-Marc Burfin. She earned a master's degree in music from Northwestern University, studying under Victor Yampolsky and Mallory Thompson. She continued graduate studies in music for a doctorate at the University of Michigan, where her teachers included Kenneth Kieser. At the University of Michigan, she also served as the conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra and University Philharmonia Orchestra.

Carneiro first gained attention as a finalist in the 2002 Maazel-Vilar Conductor's Competition at Carnegie Hall. The first woman to hold this post, the position marks Carneiro's first music directorship, and her first concert in that capacity took place in October 2009. In May 2018, the Berkeley Symphony announced the conclusion of Carneiro's music directorship of the orchestra at the end of the 2017–2018 season, at which time she is to take the title of music director emerita.

In September 2013, Carneiro was announced as the next principal conductor of the Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, effective 1 January 2014.

Carneiro will make her Edinburgh International Festival debut in August 2019, leading the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and organist Stephen Farr in a performance of Sir James MacMillan's pieces A Scotch Bestiary and Woman of the Apocalypse.

Personal life

Carneiro has been married twice. Her first husband was Simão Vital, an investment banker. The couple are the parents of triplets, born in February 2017.