Biography
Music, for Oksana Velychko, is above all a language — one more universal than any other, capable of reaching places where even the most skilled words fall short. It was this conviction, combined with a natural instinct for bringing people together, that led her from an early love of literature and language to the conductor’s podium.
Born in Mukachevo in western Ukraine, Oksana came to music through singing and choral conducting, studying at the Dezső Zádor Music College in Uzhhorod and later at the Mykola Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy, where she completed a Master’s degree in choral conducting in 2015. A brief period teaching conducting and directing the student choir at the Mukachevo Humanitarian-Pedagogical College confirmed what she already sensed: that her place was not in the classroom but in front of an orchestra.
In 2017 she moved to Kyiv to study opera and symphonic conducting at the Tchaikovsky Ukrainian National Music Academy under Professor Viktor Zdorenko, completing her Master’s degree in 2023. During those years she founded KOLO, an ensemble of soloists, and worked as répétiteur and assistant conductor at the Academy’s Opera Studio, leading rehearsals and occasional performances of works by Verdi, Rachmaninoff, Gluck and Lysenko. In 2019 she was awarded the Grand Prix in the conducting category at the III All-Ukrainian Open Prokofiev Competition, with the prize including a concert with the Kyiv Camerata.
When war broke out in February 2022, Oksana relocated to Dresden. There she conducted the children’s opera chorus at the Landesbühnen Sachsen, worked with the Boys’ Choir at the Heinrich Schütz Konservatorium, and deepened her orchestral conducting studies at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber under Professor Ekkehard Klemm (Erasmus programme). She has participated in masterclasses with the PKF Prague Philharmonia, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and the National Presidential Orchestra of Ukraine.
Her recent opera work includes assistant conductor positions at the Berlin Opera Academy — Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (2024) and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel (2026) — and at the Saluzzo Opera Academy in Italy — Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (2025). In March 2024 she was invited as guest conductor by the Astana National Philharmonic Orchestra in Kazakhstan.
Since 2025, Oksana serves as Conductor and Artistic Director of the Deutsch-Französischer Chor Dresden, where she also develops cross-disciplinary projects combining choir and orchestra.
She approaches the score with the precision of a close reader and the curiosity of someone who has always been drawn to what lies beneath the surface of language — convinced that the conductor’s task is not to impose an interpretation, but to reveal what the composer already wrote.