Esa-Pekka Salonen

Born in Helsinki in 1958, Esa-Pekka Salonen studied at the Sibelius Academy in the Finnish capital, focusing on horn with Holger Fransman, conducting with Jorma Panula, and composition with Einojuhani Rautavaara. He made his conducting debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1979; in 1985 he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. From 1992 to 2009, Salonen was Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and from 2008 to 2021 he held the same position with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. He remains associated with all three orchestras as Honorary Conductor. From 2020 until the summer of 2025, he was Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. For 15 years, from 2003 to 2018, he was also Co-artistic Director of the Baltic Sea Festival. As a guest conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen has led the world’s most renowned orchestras; opera productions have taken him to the Salzburg Festival, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, the Opéra national de Paris, and, most recently, the Salzburg Easter Festival, where he conducted Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina in 2025. Particularly esteemed as an interpreter of modern music, Salonen has also earned international renown as a composer and has been awarded the UNESCO Rostrum Prize and the Grawemeyer Award. His most recent work, a horn concerto for Stefan Dohr, was commissioned by Lucerne Festival, among others. From 2015 to 2018, Salonen was composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic, and from 2021 to 2023 he served in dual roles as conductor and composer in the series “Multiversum Esa-Pekka Salonen” at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. Salonen holds seven honorary doctorates and is a Commander of the French Legion of Honor for Arts and Letters, an Honorary Knight Commander in the Order of the British Empire, and an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He teaches at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, where he directs the Negaunee Conducting Program. 

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on April 10, 1993 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in works by Haydn, Beethoven, and Nielsen.

April 2025