Joana Carneiro – “The great conductor”
She is an unavoidable name in the world of international music. Influenced by her father, she learned to play several instruments from a young age. After her education abroad, she has held numerous positions as a conductor and received multiple awards. In her career, her focus is on excellence, but she also values her family. After all, she became a mother of four children within fifteen months—a long-awaited miracle.
Joana Carneiro needs no introduction! She is a conductor, considered one of the best in the present time, and has taken Portugal’s name to every corner of the globe! Her international prestige is also acknowledged within our country. She was chosen to lead the orchestra at the World Youth Day, an event that brought Pope Francis to Lisbon. A devout Catholic, this wasn’t her first encounter with a Pope. When Benedict XVI visited the Portuguese capital, Joana Carneiro had the honor of conversing with him and still remembers his words: “Artists have the obligation to make every day a place of beauty.” And this is one of her roles as an orchestra conductor: “It is essential to always keep in mind the goal of achieving excellence and perfection,” she admits.
Award-winning international career
Holding significant positions has been a constant in Joana Carneiro’s life. She has been the principal conductor of the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra at the National Theatre of São Carlos, the music director of the Berkeley Symphony (which received two awards under her direction), the assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (where she worked with the Finnish Esa-Pekka Salonen, her mentor), the conductor of the Great Park Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, and Kitchner-Waterloo Symphony, the conductor of the Mancini Institute Orchestra, and a guest conductor with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, among others. In addition to these roles, she has also directed various international festivals, such as in Sydney, concerts at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and, as it happened in 2017, she conducted the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra during the Nobel Prize Ceremony. To her performances in the world’s best concert halls, her debut at the legendary Paris Opera was added in March of this year.
Regarding her work, the conductor admitted in one of her many interviews that she has no other ambitions: “I don’t want to do anything beyond my strength, which is conducting orchestras.” She guarantees that what she does “is an enormous privilege.”
Music in a house with nine children
Born in Lisbon in 1976, within a large family – she has eight siblings – daughter of former Minister of Education Roberto Carneiro and former deputy Maria Rosário Carneiro, sister of Adelino Amaro da Costa, the first elected Secretary-General of CDS, who tragically lost his life in a plane crash alongside Sá Carneiro.
Joana Amaro da Costa Luz Carneiro realized early on that music was her path. Her parents used to say she was “the most authoritative of the nine children,” but harmony prevailed in a bustling household. “Our home was quieter than people imagine,” she admits. She acknowledges that “having so many siblings is a gift.” The conductor recognizes that “I only have good memories of my childhood and adolescence,” and to justify her leadership role, she recalls that she has always liked to “put myself in prominent places” since childhood.
At home, music was a part of everyday life. Joana has loved music for as long as she can remember, thanks to the education she received. “My parents considered it essential for their children to have 12 years of music education. Having good grades in portuguese, math, or geography was as important as violin, orchestra, or choir.”
The importance her parents gave to music has an older explanation: her paternal grandfather, whom she never met, was from Shanghai and was a conductor. He came to Portugal to conduct the Big Band at the Lajes Air Base (Azores). This Chinese grandfather passed on his musical interest to his son, Roberto Carneiro. Joana Carneiro would be influenced by this passion that runs in the family’s blood, and she still maintains her connections to China. “My father is close to Asian culture, and we still celebrate the Chinese New Year,” she says. The conductor recalls traditions from Macau, including food, a calm way of being, and “a respect and admiration for the wisdom of the elderly” that her family still cherishes. Joana also remembers the stories her father told her about this professional musician grandfather who played the violin and clarinet, and her grandmother, a Cantonese woman who loved to sing.
Marked by the music she learned with pleasure, Joana remembers, as a teenager, the fascination she felt while watching the musical West Side Story, whose composer – Bernstein – would become one of her early inspirations.
After high school, she studied Orchestra Conducting at the National Superior Academy of Orchestra, earned a master’s degree in the same field at Northwestern University, and completed her doctorate in Michigan, USA.
Four much-desired children
Since then, her life has been a constant journey between countries, which hasn’t always been easy. “I never regretted accepting a project, but I have regretted how I organized my time,” she admits. She reveals the day she missed her older brother’s wedding because she was working abroad. “It’s a moment that doesn’t come back. I was in my early twenties and had just been appointed assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the best in the world. It was my first official concert with the orchestra, and I felt I had to fulfill my duty,” she told Sol. Today, she organizes her life to balance her professional and personal sides because “it is essential to keep my relationships alive and my family routines. That comes first.”
She has been married to José de Assunção Gonçalves, a surgeon, since 2011. After several years of marriage without children, Joana Carneiro achieved an unprecedented feat, as she confessed in an interview in 2022 with Francisco Pinto Balsemão, which astonishes everyone: “I had four children in 15 months.” How was this possible? Because the first birth was triplets. “Life changed radically, really!” leading her to say, “We have a very special family management.” Sometimes, the family accompanies her on her travels abroad because she doesn’t like the solitary aspect of this life, and Joana acknowledges that her husband, who introduced her to the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, is a great support. “I have a wonderful husband.”
Spiritual leadership
She is used to conducting orchestras of 100 musicians (many of different nationalities) who play more than a dozen instruments, but the universal language of music unites them without barriers. “If we want to inspire beauty, leadership must be spiritual,” which is why she has no doubt in saying that patience is the best quality of a conductor.
Knowing she wanted to conduct orchestras since she was 9 years old, Joana Carneiro has no doubts about the benefits of music in children’s education. “Music is essential in human development. Music creates extremely important skills in human beings in terms of discipline, memory, and imagination,” she explained in an interview with Sol.
Although she can play several instruments, Joana particularly likes the guitar. If asked about her favorite conductor, the answer is Bach, but she also loves Mozart and Stravinsky. She dreams of conducting Tristan and Isolde by Wagner, and regarding contemporary Portuguese names, Luís Tinoco is her favorite composer, and the one she feels closest to creatively. When asked about her future as a conductor, Joana Carneiro admits: “I believe that my contribution as an artist must be focused on contemporary production.”
By: Alberto Miranda
