Joana Carneiro was named Music Director of Berkeley Symphony in 2009, succeeding Kent Nagano and becoming only the third music director in the 40-year history of the orchestra. She also currently serves as official guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra and in January 2014 she was appointed Principal Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfonica Portuguesa and Teatro Sao Carlos in Lisbon.

Carneiro’s growing guest-conducting career continues to develop very quickly. Recent and future highlights include engagements with the BBC Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic (whom she conducted at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in December 2017) Swedish Radio Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, RTE Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Gothenburg Symphony.  She continues to be sought after for opera, enjoying major recent success the English National Opera with the world stage premiere of John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary, a production of La Passion de Simone at the Ojai Festival and a production of Van der Aa’s Book of Disquiet with the London Sinfonietta.

Elsewhere Joana has previously conducted the Sydney Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Orchestra de Bretagne, Norrköping Symphony, Norrlands Opera Orchestra, Residentie Orkest/Hague, Prague Philharmonia, Malmo Symphony, National Orchestra of Spain and the Orchestra Sinfonica del Teatro la Fenice at the Venice Biennale, as well as the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Macau Chamber Orchestra and Beijing Orchestra at the International Music Festival of Macau. In the Americas, she has led the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New World Symphony and São Paulo State Symphony.