Canadian-born conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin became the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director with the beginning of the 2018–19 season. He made his company debut in 2009 with a new production of Bizet’s Carmen and has since returned every season, conducting nearly 200 performances of 20 operas, as well as numerous galas and Met Orchestra concerts at Carnegie Hall. During the 2023–24 season, he returns to the podium to conduct the Met premieres of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas, a new production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, a revival of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Verdi’s Requiem, and concerts with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
He has been music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2012 and held the same position with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra—where he now serves as honorary conductor—between 2008 and 2018. Since 2000, he has served as artistic director and principal conductor of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain. During the 2019–20 season, he was a Carnegie Hall Perspectives Artist.
Maestro Nézet-Séguin has worked with many leading European ensembles and enjoys close collaborations with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. From 2008 to 2014, he was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He has appeared at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival and the BBC Proms, as well as the festivals of Edinburgh, Lucerne, Grafenegg, Lanaudière, Vail, and Saratoga. He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2008 conducting a new production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and returned in 2010 and 2011 for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Other operatic appearances have included performances at La Scala, Covent Garden, the Dutch National Opera, and the Vienna State Opera. In 2011, he began a cycle of seven Mozart operas for the Festival Hall Baden-Baden, which Deutsche Grammophon recorded live.
Recent recordings include his first solo piano album, Introspection: Solo Piano Sessions; Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Entführung aus dem Serail and the complete symphonies of Schumann with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (featuring pianist Daniil Trifonov), Bernstein’s Mass, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Philadelphia Orchestra; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 with the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He has been nominated for 11 Grammy Awards, winning most recently for conducting the Met’s recording of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones and collaborating with Renée Fleming on Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene.
Maestro Nézet-Séguin studied piano, conducting, composition, and chamber music at the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec in Montreal and choral conducting at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, before going on to study with renowned conductors, most notably Carlo Maria Giulini. His honors include the Order of Montreal, Oskar Morawetz Award, Musical America’s 2016 Artist of the Year, the Royal Philharmonic Society Award, Canada’s National Arts Centre Award, the Prix Denise-Pelletier awarded by the Quebec government, and the 2015 Medal of Honor from the National Assembly of Quebec. He holds honorary doctorates from McGill University, the University of Quebec in Montreal, the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, and Westminster Choir College of Rider University. He has received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres du Québec in 2015 and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2012 and an Officer of the Order of Québec in 2015.
