Kristo Kondakçi (born 30 June 1991) is an Albanian-American conductor who is currently the music director of the Kendall Square Orchestra, the Eureka Ensemble, and the Narragansett Bay Symphony Community Orchestra. He is also the cofounder of the Women's Chorus, a choral program for women experiencing homelessness in Boston.
Kondakçi is an assistant professor of conducting at the Berklee College of Music. He has previously served as director of orchestras in an interim capacity at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2019) as well as assistant conductor with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra (2015-2017) and conducting fellow of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (2015-2018).
Early life
Kristo Kondakçi was born in Tirana, Albania in 1991. He immigrated to the United States with his family as political refugees when Kondakçi was five years old.
Political persecution in Albania
During the 20th Century, many members of Kondakçi's family were brutally persecuted by Albanian Dictator Enver Hoxha and the Albanian Communist regime. Kondakçi's maternal grandfather, Beqir Omari, was imprisoned for eight years in the notorious Spaç Prison for performing western music. Beqir Omari's brother, Gramoz, was a virtuoso musician and doctor who was executed by Enver Hoxha in 1968. Beqir's father (Kondakçi's great-grandfather), Eqerem Omari, was a noted agricultural scientist and one of the most important grain specialists in Albania.
Eqerem was a relative of noted Albanian politician Bahri Omari. Bahri Omari moved to the United States in 1914 to serve as chief editor of the first Albanian-American Newspaper, Dielli. He then returned to Albania in the 1920s to serve as general secretary of the National Democratic Party of Albania and then as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 1940s. In 1945, after the Communist Regime came to power under Enver Hoxha, Bahri Omari was put on trial and executed.
Many other family members were either executed, imprisoned, exiled, or sent to internment areas.
Kristo Kondakçi's grandfather, Beqir Omari, also immigrated to the United States to help raise him and his brother, Gramoz Kondakçi. At home, his grandfather would regularly make music and recount stories about the family and their history of Albania.
Education
Kristo Kondakçi's main instrument was the piano. He began teaching himself at the age of eleven after receiving a keyboard as a gift. He attended Sacred Heart School in Quincy, Massachusetts and continued at Boston College High School, graduating in 2009.
At the age of fifteen, Kondakçi began attending the preparatory school of New England Conservatory, studying piano with Tatyana Dudochkin, composition with Rodney Lister, and musical interpretation and conducting with Benjamin Zander and Courtney Lewis.
After graduating high school, he continued his studies at New England Conservatory, completing an Undergraduate degree in Composition with composer Michael Gandolfi (2013) and a Master's degree in Conducting with Charles Peltz (2015).
Reconstruction of the 1889 version of Mahler's First Symphony
During his undergraduate studies in 2011, Kristo Kondakçi became involved in a special project to mark the centennial of composer Gustav Mahler's death. With oversight and guidance by New England Conservatory professor Katarina Markovic and conductor Hugh Wolff, Kondakçi reconstructed a performing edition of the earliest version of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, which was thought to be lost for over 100 years, based on two of the earliest manuscript sources for the symphony. The New England Conservatory Philharmonia performed this version in September 2011 under conductor Hugh Wolff to mark a semester long school festival around Mahler's music. The concert marked the American premiere of this earliest version of the first symphony, and the first time it has been heard in this form since its 1889 premiere.
