Yaroslav Tkalenko was born in Zaporzhye Region (Ukraine).
In year 1998 he graduated from the Gnessin Academy of Music in orchestral conducting.
During 2000 – 2006 Yaroslav was a musical director and conductor of the old music chamber orchestra ‘The Royal Court’. He has also had an internship at Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre. He has held concerts with the State Symphony Orchestra (artistic director – Vladimir Ponkin) and has worked with Mariinsky Theatre, Helikon Opera in Moscow and Voronezh Theater of Opera and Ballet, Russian Academical Youth Theater as well (XII «Summer ballet seasons» festival), and has frequently taken part in the projects of the Moscow International House of Music.
Since year 2002, Yaroslav Tkalenko has been a conductor at the Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre where he has conducted the performances of Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, Gounod’s Faust, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Bizet’s Carmen, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Eugene Onegin, The Marriage by Mussorgsky, along with Erenberg’s Vampuka and Mussorgsky’s ‘Boris Godunov’.
He has also taken part in tours of the Opera Centre in Russia and in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Mexico, as well as in the «May Opera Nights Festival» in Macedonia, the I All-Russian «Panorama of Musical Theaters» Festival in Omsk, «The New Wanderers» Festival, the All-Russian Pushkin Theater Festival, the International Art Festival «War and Peace», and opera festival «Bartok +» ( Miskolc , Hungary).
Yaroslav has conducted the competitive auditions and winners’ gala concert at the Galina Vishnevskaya International Opera Singers Competition in Moscow (2008, 2010).
Since year 2012 – he is the principal conductor of Tomsk Symphony Orchestra.