Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who was born in 1975 in Montreal, studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec. At the age of 19 he became acquainted with Carlo Maria Giulini, one of his major inspirations; for a year he was able to follow the conductor in rehearsals. Nézet-Séguin’s earliest positions were with his own ensembles and as chorus director at the Opéra de Mont-real. In 2000 he was appointed Music Director of the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal. He started his tenure as Principal Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008; in 2012 he will also take over as Music Director of the venerable Philadelphia Orchestra. In addition Nézet-Séguin has regularly appeared with such leading European orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which appointed him Principal Guest Conductor in 2008. In the United States, along with the Philadelphia Orchestra he has conducted the Boston Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As an opera conductor Nézet-Séguin made a sensational debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2008 in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette; in 2011 he also led this production at La Scala in Milan. In 2009 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in Bizet’s Carmen and also appeared at the Nederlandse Opera in Janácek’s The Makropulos Affair; in July 2011 he led Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden. Nézet-Séguin’s recording of works by Maurice Ravel won the Edison Award; in 2010 he received Canada’s National Arts Centre Award.
August 2011