Maxime Tortelier – direttore d’orchestra (Francia, UK)

About

Maxime Tortelier – conducter (France, UK)

Wide concert activity,

Conducts such orchestras as Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France in a contemporary music series with Radio France.

Maxime Tortelier is an exciting talent emerging on the international conducting scene, having made his mark as the Leverhulme Young Conductor in Association with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, a post he held for two years until September 2014. With this orchestra he appeared regularly in concerts across the South and South West of England, and was recently reviewed as “outstanding” and “charismatic”.

In the 2014/15 season, Maxime will make his conducting debut with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra. He will also return to conduct the Orchestre National de France in a contemporary music series with Radio France featuring new works by up-and-coming composers.

He made his conducting debut in 2009 with the Sofia Festival Orchestra at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. In 2012 he was a semi-finalist in the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition and was singled out as the “outstanding participant” of a masterclass with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop. During other courses and masterclasses he also conducted the Royal Scottish National, the Tasmanian Symphony and the BBC Concert Orchestras, working with David Zinman and Martyn Brabbins amongst others.

While in Colin Metters’s conducting class at the Royal Academy of Music, Maxime Tortelier worked with the Academy’s many different ensembles and singers, under the additional guidance of such figures as George Hurst and Leif Segerstam. He also rehearsed the Academy’s orchestras in preparation for performances by Sir Simon Rattle and the late Sir Colin Davis. His MA at the Academy was generously supported by the Gordon Foundation.

Born into a musical family, Maxime studied the piano from the age of five. Before picking up the baton, he graduated in literature and languages at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon and was Teaching Assistant at Harvard University. He also taught musicology in Paris at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales after completing his MPhil there, and studied theory and composition at the Paris Conservatoire where he received several first prizes.