Photo credit: Jamie Pratt

Kalena Bovell

With her distinctive voice as maestra, speaker, and poet, critics praise Panamanian-American conductor Kalena Bovell as “one of the brightest stars in classical music.” (Channel 3 News, Connecticut). Her twin tenets of musical excellence and community access have left an imprint on orchestras across North America, including recognition as a 2024 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient—the highest honor given by the Sphinx Organization—in addition to being a 2022-2024 Awardee of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship. Bovell's 2023-2024 season sees her traverse Canada, the U.S. and Switzerland where she will make debut performances with the Louisiana Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony and the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera.  Bovell has also blazed a formidable trail in just the past few years. She shined as a featured conductor on the Chineke! Orchestra’s 2022 album—Coleridge-Taylor, a celebration of the eponymous African-British composer. Among the critical praise for the album released on Chineke! Records, The Financial Times penned that Bovell’s musical interpretation “overflows with descriptive imagination.” Apart from the album, memorable career moments include leading the Chineke! Orchestra at the BBC Proms and conducting Kevin Thomas’s Firebird with the Collage Dance Collective as a part of the Kennedy Center’s “Reframing the Narrative.”