Born in Kyoto in 1961, Yutaka Sado graduated from Kyoto Municipal Horikawa High School and the Kyoto City University of Arts. He was an assistant at the principal Japanese opera company before starting to work with Seiji Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein in the United States in 1987. As Ozawa’s assistant at the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra in Tokyo, he made his debut conducting a series of Haydn symphonies. After winning the Special Davidoff Music Prize in Germany in 1988, he toured Germany and the USSR as Bernstein’s assistant. His international career took off in 1989 when he won First Prize at the Thirty-ninth International Conductors’ Competition in Besançon; in 1995 he also won First Prize at the International Leonard Bernstein Competition in Jerusalem. For many years he has taken part in the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, founded by Bernstein, becoming Conductor in Residence alongside the Artistic Directors Christoph Eschenbach and Charles Dutoit. He was recently appointed Artistic Director of the Hyogo Performing Arts Center, inaugurated in Kobé in 2005. He has appeared as guest conductor with prestigious orchestras throughout the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy where he will make his debut at Teatro La Fenice in Venice in 2008. Yutaka Sado has made numerous recordings both in Japan and Europe.