Karen Kamensek

Karen Kamensek (born January 2, 1970, in Chicago) is an American orchestral and opera conductor.

Biography Kamensek's parents immigrated from Kamnica pri Mariboru, Slovenia to the United States, eventually settling in the Louisville, Kentucky area. She is an alumnus of New Albany High School.

Having undergone musical education from an early age, she won the Louisville Orchestra Young Artists Competition, before attending Indiana University for undergraduate and graduate studies. Kamensek received degrees in orchestral conducting and piano performance from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.

Kamensek has served as the first of the Volksoper Wien from 2000 to 2002. She was General Music Director (, abbreviated as GMD) of the Theater Freiburg from 2003 to 2006, the first female conductor in Freiburg history. She has served as Interim Music Director at the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor from 2007 to 2008, and Associate Music Director at the Staatsoper Hamburg from 2008 to 2011. In 2011, she was named GMD and principal conductor of the Staatsoper Hannover, the first female conductor to hold the Hannover posts. She relinquished the GMD title in 2015, and remained as principal conductor through 2016.

Work with Philip Glass Kamensek is a noted advocate and interpreter of the music of Philip Glass. She made her English National Opera (ENO) conducting debut in March 2016 with Glass' opera Akhnaten. Kamensek has frequently collaborated with Glass and conducted the 2005 Orange Mountain Music recording of the composer's Les Enfants Terribles. In 2017, Kamensek gave her debut concert at The Proms, with Britten Sinfonia, conducting the first full live performance of Philip Glass's and Ravi Shankar's Passages, with Shankar's daughter Anoushka Shankar as soloist. She returned to ENO for their 2018 revival of Glass' Satyagraha.

In November 2019, Kamensek made her Metropolitan Opera conducting debut with Akhnaten. On 23 November 2019, Kamensek conducted the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD performance and cinema transmission of Akhnaten, In July 2026, Kamensek conducted the world premiere performance of Glass' Symphony No. 15 ('Lincoln') at the Tanglewood Music Center, following Glass' decision to withdraw the previously scheduled world premiere at the Kennedy Center.