Enyi Okpara is the Calleva Assistant Conductor of Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, after winning the BSO’s Calleva Conducting Competition in 2024. He is also the Artistic Director and Founder of Elysium Music and was recently listed on Classic FM’s Rising Stars List for 2025, as one of “30 incredible musicians under 30”.

Going into his second year as the Calleva Assistant Conductor, the 2025/26 season will see Enyi conduct Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in various performances across the South and Southwest. Highlights for the season also include debuts with Manchester Camerata, the London Symphony Orchestra in an LSO Discovery project, the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain and conducting the Black British Classical Foundation Opera Competition. He also returns to the London Schools Symphony Orchestra for their summer tour. Recent projects include performances with Chineke! Orchestra including collaborations with George the Poet and Ayanna Witter-Johnson.

Enyi has performed with some of the country’s leading soloists including Alim Beisembayev, Julian Bliss, Danny Driver, Milly Forrest, Joe Stilgoe and Ayanna Witter-Johnson. The upcoming season sees him perform with Johannes Moser, Nikita Boriso-Glebsky, Anna Lapwood, Elizabeth Watts, Thomas Luke and Martin James Bartlett.

During the 2023/24 season, Enyi was the Conductor in Residence for the London Schools Symphony Orchestra. He was also one of six conductors selected to conduct the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2024, as part of their Emerging Conductors’ Showcase, and was Assistant Conductor for Royal Academy Opera’s production of Britten’s Albert Herring. In 2022, Enyi was a finalist at the inaugural Weston Conductors Competition, during which he conducted the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain and was also awarded the Young Conducting Scholarship with the national choral charity Sing for Pleasure in 2021.

Hugely passionate about music outreach, accessibility, and education, Enyi is the Artistic Director and Founder of Elysium Music. Founded in September 2021, Elysium is a charity dedicated to collaborative projects between young professional musicians and children. It bridges the gap between music in schools and conservatoire music making by providing side-by-side projects, workshops and resources to provide school musicians with a real flavour of life as a professional musician.

Growing up in Camden, North London, Enyi’s musical journey started initially as a percussionist and saxophonist and member of the Camden Music Hub. Enyi studied for an MA in Orchestral Conducting with Sian Edwards at the Royal Academy of Music, where he held the Derek Butler Award. He graduated in 2024 with Distinction, was awarded a DipRAM prize for outstanding final recital, and won HRH Princess Alice, The Duchess of Gloucester Prize for exemplary studentship and performance. Enyi recently appeared on BBC Radio 3’s This Classical Life presented by Jess Gillam, and the podcast Things People Do, hosted by Joe Marler and Tom Fordyce.