Born in Vilnius, Lithuania on April 2, 1986, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is an acclaimed classical conductor and musical director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Growing up in a musical family - her father was leader of the Chamber Choir Aidija Romualdas Gražinis and her mother and siblings were musicians – she learned how to conduct without learning to play an instrument and performed her first concert at the age of 13. She graduated from the University of Graz in Austria in 2007 and continued her studies in orchestral conducting in Leipzig, Germany at the Zurich Conservatory. She became an assistant choirmaster in Heidelberg, Germany in 2011 and won the Salzburg Young Conductors Competition the following year. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla became choirmaster at the Bern Opera in Bern, Switzerland, and then assistant conductor to Gustavo Dudamel at the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra from 2014 to 2016. She became musical director of the Salzburg Theater in Austria from 2015 to 2017. She began her association with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2015 and performed at the London Proms the following year. Signing to the Deutsche Grammophon label , she released her debut album, Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21, in 2019. The album, which featured chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica and violinist Gidon Kremer, won the Gramophone Award for orchestral recording of the year and an Opus Klassik Award. Her 2021 album The British Project featured works by British composers including Britten, Elgar, Walton, and Vaughan Williams. In 2022, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla continued her journey into Weinberg symphonies with the release of Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7 - Flute Concerto No. 1, which featured Kirill Gerstein (harpsichord) and Marie-Christine Zupancíc (flute).
