Conductor Yaniv Segal has led orchestras in the U.S., Britain, and Europe, and has founded three new ensembles. He has also been active as a composer and actor.

Segal was born in New York on May 9, 1981, to Polish and Israeli immigrant parents and grew up speaking three languages at home. His mother, Hanna Lachert, was a New York Philharmonic violinist, and his father, David Segal, was a noted violin maker. Segal was immersed in music as a child and took up the violin at age four, studying with Setsu Goto, mother of star violinist Midori. At eight, he joined the Metropolitan Opera Chorus as a boy soprano, which exposed him to such legendary figures as conductor Georg Solti and soprano Dawn Upshaw. As a teen, Segal pursued both singing and acting, appearing in a touring production of the musical The Secret Garden (with his mother in the pit orchestra at one point) that traveled to Japan as well as around the U.S. He was also heard in television commercials. Segal attended Vassar College in New York State, majoring in music. While there, he founded the Mahagonny Ensemble, which specialized in contemporary music.

Moving to New York, Segal worked for several years as a freelance violinist and founded or co-founded two more groups, the Pamplemousse Ensemble, oriented toward contemporary music, and the Chelsea Symphony (named for the Manhattan neighborhood), which strives to provide opportunities for young musicians. The latter group has been heard on the soundtrack to the Amazon video series Mozart in the Jungle. Segal attended the University of Michigan, studying conducting with Kenneth Kiesler and composition with Bright Sheng. While there, he conducted the Ann Arbor Symphony and served as a substitute conductor with the Detroit Symphony. After finishing his degree in 2013, Segal became assistant conductor of the Naples (Florida) Philharmonic the following year, remaining there until 2017, leading the organization's youth orchestra and conducting some 20 concerts annually. He found time to tour Europe as an assistant to Andrey Boreyko with the I, CULTURE Orchestra, and to lead such groups as the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, New Symphony Orchestra (Bulgaria), and the Thuringen Philharmonie (Germany) as a guest. He conducted the Krakow Philharmonic and Opera and then became the assistant conductor of the Krzysztof Penderecki Festival in Warsaw.

Segal has continued to compose, often making free arrangements of non-orchestral works for orchestra. Among these were a set of orchestral versions of songs by Alma Mahler, performed by the Naples Philharmonic, a Sonata for Orchestra based on Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2, and a Fidelio Symphony, extracted from Beethoven's opera Fidelio. The latter two works were featured on the Naxos release Beethoven Reimagined, with Segal conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The album, released in 2020, also featured the Beethoven9 Symphonic Remix by classical-electronic crossover artist Gabriel Prokofiev. ~ James Manheim, Rovi