Creative polymath Yaniv Segal has achieved critical success since childhood for his work as a conductor, composer, actor and violinist. A rising star who is “redefining classical music” (Esquire Magazine), Segal was named music director of the Salina Symphony in May of 2022. He is conductor laureate and artistic advisor of the Chelsea Symphony, a former assistant conductor of the Naples Philharmonic and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and has assisted at the New York Philharmonic. With performances described as “enthusiastic, lively and incisive” (Giornale di Sicilia) and “illuminating” (New York Times), Yaniv has collaborated with artists ranging from Yitzhak Perlman and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg to the Beach Boys and Chris Botti. He has appeared with many orchestras worldwide including the Minnesota Orchestra, Kansai Philharmonic, Sinfonietta Cracovia and Beethoven Academy Orchestra.

In 2020, NAXOS released Yaniv’s Beethoven REimagined, a commercial recording made with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Called “exciting [and] outrageous” by the Times of London, the album presents contemporary music inspired by Beethoven arranged and written by Yaniv as well as composer/DJ Gabriel Prokofiev. Previous commercial releases include the works of David Chesky on Joy and Sorrow, and The Mice War, an opera that teaches the children about the folly of war and is available for streaming from Amazon.

Drawing on his experience as a music educator and father, Segal wrote The Harmony Games in 2018. It was commissioned by the Naples Philharmonic to introduce school-age children to the orchestra while connecting music and math; it has already been performed more than 50 times. In recent years, Yaniv’s works and arrangements have been performed by the Reno Philharmonic, Ashland Symphony Orchestra, Grand Rapid Youth Symphony and Classical Orchestra, and the Norwalk Symphony.

Yaniv grew up in New York with a Polish mother, a violinist who was one of the first women in the New York Philharmonic, and an Israeli father, a luthier who made the instruments his family plays on. As a child, Yaniv sang at the Metropolitan Opera, starred as Colin in the International Broadway Tour of The Secret Garden, and was “convincing” (New York Times) as Joe in Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood at Lincoln Center. He studied violin with Setsu Goto, and twice was a soloist with the Yonkers Philharmonic. Yaniv attended Vassar College and earned graduate degrees in conducting and composition at the University of Michigan with support from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. He has also studied with Lorin Maazel and Kurt Masur, and continues to receive mentorship from international conductors Leonard Slatkin and Andrey Boreyko.

Segal lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife, a scientist and physician, and two young sons.