Barbara Dragan

2017 Honorable Mention

Barbara Dragan most recently was named Conducting Fellow for the 2021 The Dallas Opera Hart Institute.

From April 2021 she is studying Konzertexamen at Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg with Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr.

Dragan is an award recipient of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship (TACF) and the German DAAD Scholarship.

She has conducted prestigious orchestras including the Magdeburgische Philharmonie, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Bochumer Symphoniker, Polish Radio Orchestra, Sinfonietta Cracovia, Festival Orchestra Wien, Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt, Beethoven’s Academy Orchestra, Zagreb Chamber Orchestra and the Frédéric Chopin Music University Symphony Orchestra.

She graduated from Universität der Künste in Berlin, where she studied with Prof. Steven Sloane and Harry Curtis (International Conducting Academy Berlin). Prior to her studies there, she was a student at the Frédéric Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. She has taken part in many masterclasses, including those led by Colin Metters, Jorma Panula, Sian Edwards, and Antony Hermus. 

Dragan was born into a Polish family of scientists and engineers. She started playing the violin from the age of five and thirteen years later, she graduated from a music high school. Whilst studying the violin and the oboe, she passed her final exams in advanced mathematics and physics.