Biography
"… an exhibition of the best that the orchestra could possibly sound: controlled, concentrated and mindfully attentive. The French conductor is in his prime, and one hears the intellectual in the articulation of his discourse. There is an efficiency how, in few rehearsals, he achieves just what he needs to configure sound-wise, and he is easily followed by the musicians behind their stands."
El Universal, Mexico City
"Gasançon presented a full, compact orchestra, amalgamated with very refined sounds, managing to expose a wide range of nuances. As expected, the public burst into a warm ovation at the quality of what was offered"
Donato Décima, Asociación de Críticos Musicales de la Argentina
"The real artistic success of the evening was the Rite of Spring in Mexico of Gasançon, winner of one of the editions of the extinct Eduardo Mata Conducting Competition, and whose technical and intelectual capacities were already admired. Gasançon has visited us with so many orchestras in the country, but had never had the challenge of conducting a work like this, with such an orchestra and allowing at the same time to show his own reading of the score, serve with efficiency the show of the evening, the dance (a triple challenge). The orchestra of the Palacio sounded brilliant, precise, and offered a lively performance, violent and emotional, that should be recorded just like that, on its own."
El Universal, Mexico City
Sylvain Gasançon was named by the Ofunam orchestra in Mexico City as their next Chief Conductor. The appointment will extend for an initial term of three years from January 2023 to December 2025.
Sylvain won first prize in the International Eduardo Mata Conducting Competition in Mexico in 2005. The following year, he was awarded second prize at the International Jorma Panula Conducting Competition in Vaasa, Finland.
He has quickly become an established conductor on the international scene. He consistently receives public and critical acclaim for his powerful and musical interpretations of works that range from Brahms to Berio, and from Messiaen to Korngold and Schoenberg, with a special interest in unknown or forgotten pieces of the french, but also german or english, repertoire of the 20th century.
In North America, Europe and Asia he has conducted the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, the Magdeburgische Philharmonie, Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, the Vaasa City Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Lorraine, the Orchestre de Bretagne, Sinfonia Rotterdam, the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, the Sofia Festival Orchestra, the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra and the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa.
Gasançon enjoys a close relationship with Latin America and has led nearly all of the major orchestras in the region, including the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, the Argentine National Symphony, the Bogotá Philharmonic and National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, the National Symphony Orchestra of Chile. He returns regularly to Mexico to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra, the OFUNAM and the Orquesta del Palacio de Bellas Artes.
He has collaborated with soloists of prestige including Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer, Shlomo Mintz, Peter Donohoe, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Lara St. John, Vadym Kholodenko, Anna Geniushene, Leticia Moreno, Rachel Barton Pine, Simone Lamsma, Leonard Elschenbroich, Madara Petersone, Nicolas Dautricourt, Benedetto Lupo, Sergei Nakariakov, Alex Klein, Lucas Macías Navarro, the Catalyst Quartet, Gwyneth Wentink, Nathalie Forget, Adam Golka and Fabio Martino among others.
His first conducting teacher was Jean-Sébastien Béreau. He subsequently received guidance from conductors Gerhard Markson at the Mozarteum Salzburg, Gianluigi Gelmetti at the Fondazione Chigiana in Siena, Jorma Panula and Pinchas Zukerman at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and Jorma Panula in Lausanne and Saint Petersburg. He graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where he studied harmony, fugue, counterpoint, analysis and orchestration.
Gasançon is also an authority on musicology. He obtained a master’s degree in musicology at the Université de Paris.
Born in Metz, France, he began studying music at the age of five. He gave his first violin concerts at a very early age and graduated from the Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles under Prof. Endre Kleve.
(last version updated: 06/2023. Do not alter without permission)