Kanako Abe is a Japanese conductor, pianist and composer living in Europe.

Having obtained a diploma in composition in Tokyo and then 7 prizes from the Paris Conservatory, Kanako Abe first pursued a career as a pianist. Her album devoted to the solo piano works of Toru Takemitsu (2002) was particularly acclaimed by critics. She then made her debut as a conductor in 2003, and was regularly invited to conduct the contemporary repertoire with the Ensemble L'Itinéraire, the Smash Ensemble, Tokyo Ensemble Factory, performing at the Venice Biennale, the GMEM Festival in Marseille, the Festival Musica, the Festival l'Archipel in Geneva, and the Festival Dutilleux. 

In 2005, she founded the Ensemble Multilatérale, a contemporary music ensemble of which she was musical director until 2014. She has conducted more than 200 world premieres, in close collaboration with several composers, including Michael Jarrell and Michaël Lévinas. Her discography includes four monographic discs by Régis Campo (1999, 2002, 20051, 2014), a monographic CD/DVD by Colin Roche (with the Ensemble Multilatérale, Sismal-MFA, 2007), a disc devoted to Japanese symphonic works (Orchestra Nipponica, 2016) as well as the 3 monographic discs by Yassen Vodenitcharov (2018), Somei Satoh (2021) and Jummei Suzuki (2021) and  a disc dedicated to the work of female composers from different eras (Orchestre Pasdeloup, 2023). 

By focusing her interest on different musical aesthetics and in symphonic training, she conducts the Pasdeloup Orchestra, the Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon National Opera Orchestra, the Lorraine National Orchestra, the Lille National Orchestra, Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra, Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Garde Républicaine Symphony Orchestra, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra. 

Passionate about lyrical art since childhood, she directs her activities in this field: after multiple experiences as a rehearsal pianist and choir coach, she works in several opera productions. Assistant conductor at the Orchestre national Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon Opera in 2008-2009, the Théâtre du Châtelet (Zauberflöte – 2009), the Opéra national du Rhin (Macbeth – 2010), Opernhaus de Zurich (Gesualdo, the new opera by Marc-André Dalbavie – 2010), collaborating with many conductors such as Fabio Luisi, Jerzy Semkow, Lawrence Foster, Enrique Mazzola, Alain Altinoglu. 

In 2022 she conducted the world premiere of the multimedia opera Woman at Point Zero of the British composer Bushra El-Turk at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. The opera was again staged in June 2023 at the Royal Opera House in London, and then in 2024 at the Wiener Festwochen with the same cast and conductor. Gary Naylor of BroadwayWorld gave it a 5-star review, calling it an "important, moving work". Naylor also praised the interpretation by Kanako Abe and stated that her interpretation and the multimedia elements contributed to the creation of an "aural dreamscape". 

As of the 2024–25 season Kanako Abe is music and artistic director of the Orchestre Symphonique des Dômes in the French Auvergne region. Further, Abe is president of the Association Franco-Japonaise de la Musique Contemporaine, a French-Japanese organisation for the promotion of contemporary music in France and Japan.

In 2025, she is scheduled to make her debut at the Dutch National Opera and the New National Theatre in Tokyo.

In November 2025, her commissioned work, Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, will have its world premiere by the Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra under her own direction.

Official website www.kanakoabe.com