Vinay Parameswaran

Biography

Internationally recognised for his energetic presence, imaginative programming, and compelling musicianship, Vinay Parameswaran is one of the most exciting and versatile young conductors on the podium today. 

Highlights of the 2024/25 season included his UK debut with the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia (London), BBC Symphony, and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras, alongside US debuts with the Seattle Symphony and Chicago Sinfonietta. In 2025/26, he makes his debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and returns to the Cleveland Orchestra and Symphony San Jose. He also returns to the Curtis Institute of Music to conduct Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dreamand leads an ‘Opera in Concert’ project at the Manhattan School of Music.

Other recent guest appearances include the Phoenix Symphony, San Antonio Philharmonic, Knoxville Symphony, Charlotte Symphony, Houston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Grant Park Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra, with re-invitations from the Nashville Symphony, Eugene Symphony, and Rochester Philharmonic.

From 2017 to 2022, Parameswaran served as Assistant and later Associate Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, leading numerous concerts each season at Severance Hall, the Blossom Music Festival, and on tour. He was previously Associate Conductor of the Nashville Symphony, where over three seasons he conducted more than 150 performances, including a subscription debut in 2016/17 with works by Gabriella Smith, Grieg, and Prokofiev.

A strong advocate for music education, he has recently led school and family concerts with the Chicago Symphony and New Jersey Symphony, as well as projects and performances at leading conservatories including the San Francisco Conservatory, Curtis Institute of Music, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Manhattan School of Music. As Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (2017–2022), he directed an acclaimed four-city European tour that featured a performance at the Musikverein in Vienna.

Equally at home in the concert hall, opera house, and recording studio, Parameswaran has conducted productions of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, and Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen with the Curtis Opera Theater. In Cleveland, he assisted Franz Welser-Möst on productions of Verdi’s Otello, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. His recordings include Two x Four with the Curtis Ensemble 20/21 and violinists Jaime Laredo and Jennifer Koh, featuring works by Bach, David Ludwig, Philip Glass, and Anna Clyne, as well as digital concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra for its streaming platform.

Parameswaran was a Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and has participated in masterclasses with David Zinman (National Arts Centre Orchestra, Ottawa) and with Marin Alsop and Gustav Meier (Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music). In 2021, he received a Career Assistance Award from the Solti Foundation U.S.

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he graduated with honours from Brown University with a BA in music and political science, studying conducting with Paul Phillips. He went on to earn an Artist Diploma in conducting from the Curtis Institute of Music as the Albert M. Greenfield Fellow, studying with renowned pedagogue Otto-Werner Mueller. He is currently based in Vancouver, BC.