Kirill Karabits (born 26 December 1976 in Kyiv) is a Ukrainian conductor and the son of the composer Ivan Karabyts. He studied piano, composition, and conducting in Kyiv before continuing his training at the Vienna University of Music, and first appeared as a conductor at the age of nineteen. After early posts with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, he gained international recognition through his long association with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Appointed principal conductor in 2009, he became the first Ukrainian to lead a major British orchestra and remained in the post until 2024, later becoming conductor laureate and artistic director of its Voices from the East project. Kirill Karabits is especially known for championing Eastern European, Ukrainian, Caucasian, and Central Asian composers alongside the standard symphonic repertoire. His recordings include music by Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, Rodion Shchedrin, and many lesser-known composers from the former Soviet sphere. In 2016, he became Generalmusikdirektor and chief conductor of the Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar, a position he left in the Summer of 2019. He has also taken part in important musical rediscoveries, including works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Franz Liszt. In 2026, he released a recording of the very rare Thomas de Hartmann opera, Esther, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
