She is a Canadian conductor of operatic and symphonic repertoire.
Wilson was born on May 17, 1967, in Milwaukee in the U.S. state of Wisconsin to an accomplished musical family. The richly artistic tradition into which she was born includes a grandfather who was an operatic baritone and a pianist grandmother. Her mother, Lynn Sharples, was a professor of English at the Université de Toulon, and her father, Carlisle Wilson, is a violinist and music educator.
As a child, she studied flute, piano and violin, was a member of the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra and performed as a flute soloist with the Winnipeg Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic. She also attended the Banff School of Music summer program. Later, she continued her studies in the United States at the Juilliard School, where she studied flute under Julius Baker. Mounting interest in conducting put her under the tutelage of Otto-Werner Mueller. During her student years at Juilliard, she first performed at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in May 1989. She graduated from Juilliard with master's degrees in both flute and conducting. She made her debut with the National Arts Center Orchestra of Canada at the age of 23.
From 1994-1998, Wilson was the associate conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. After her time in Dallas, she entered the international circuit as a guest conductor for both opera and symphonic repertoire with extensive engagements throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. Wilson became chief conductor of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013, becoming the first female chief conductor in the orchestra's history. She held the post through the 2014–2015 season.
Her repertoire ranges from Classical to Contemporary music. Personal favorites include Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven, and Brahms.
In 2020, she was nominated for an Opus Klassik 2020 Award as "Conductor of Year," in recognition of her work on the recording of Rossini's Sigismondo.
In April 2022, she came up with the idea for the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, eager to find a way to help musicians and others in Ukraine. In the summer of 2022, she embarked on a European and North American tour with the orchestra, including an acclaimed performance at the BBC Proms: "Brahms's Symphony No 4 – conducted by Wilson without score and with serious guts – had raw swagger to burn".
To commence her 2022/23 season, Wilson made her Metropolitan Opera debut, conducting Shostakovich's Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk. Following on from this, she conducted concerts with the Orchestre national de Bordeaux Aquitaine[ and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra. In November, she made her debut at Teatro Colon, conducting Tosca. In 2023 Wilson returned to Wiesbaden to conduct the Hessisches Staatstheater Orchester. She then conducted the Filarmonia Arturo Toscanini in Parma, Italy. In February 2023, on the eve of the first anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Wilson led a special concert in Lviv, Ukraine commemorating the victim
