Matthias Pintscher
Matthias Pintscher is the newly appointed Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony, effective from the 2024-25 season. At the end of the 2022-23 season, Matthias concluded his successful decade-long tenure as the Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the iconic Parisian contemporary ensemble founded by Pierre Boulez in 1980 and winner of the 2022 Polar Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy. Pintscher has continued and expanded the cultivation of new works by emerging composers of the 21st century, alongside performances of iconic works from the avant-garde of the 20th Century and led the Ensemble in the creation of dozens of world premieres, recorded CDs and led the ensemble on tours around the globe – to Asia and North America, and throughout Europe to all the major festivals and concert halls.
The 2023-24 season will see Matthias’ fourth year as Creative Partner at the Cincinnati Symphony, where he will conduct a new work by inti figgis-vizueta, as well as an immersive video-concert of Olivier Messiaen’s Des Canyons aux étoiles. He will also conduct the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie on tour where he is composer in residence. As a guest conductor, Matthias returns to the RAI Milano Musica, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, NDR Hamburg, Indianapolis Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Barcelona Symphony, Lahti Symphony, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, La Scala, and Berlin’s Boulez Ensemble. Pintscher has conducted several opera productions for the Berliner Staatsoper (Wagner’s Lohengrin and The Flying Dutchman), Wiener Staatsoper (Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando), and the Théatre du Châtelet in Paris. He returns to the Berliner Staatsoper in 2024 for Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee.
Conducting highlights have included projects with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Cincinnati, Montreal, Baltimore, Houston, Pittsburgh and Detroit Symphony Orchestras as well as with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Mariinsky Orchestra, Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Radio Symphonie Orchester Wien and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in addition to extensive international touring with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Matthias has also appeared as guest conductor with the NDR Hamburg, Danish Radio Symphony, Finnish Radio Symphony, Sydney Symphony and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras as well as at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Vienna State Opera to conduct the premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s opera Orlando.
Known equally as one of today’s foremost composers, Matthias’ works appear frequently on the programs of major symphony orchestras throughout the world. In August 2021, he was the focus of the Suntory Hall Summer Festival – a weeklong celebration of his works with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra as well as a residency by the EIC with symphonic and chamber music performances. His third violin concerto, Assonanza, written for Leila Josefowicz, was premiered in January 2022 with the Cincinnati Symphony. Another 2021-22 world premiere was neharot, a co-commission of Suntory Hall, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Staatskapelle Dresden, where he was named Capell-Compositeur. In the 2016-17 season, he was the inaugural composer-in-residence of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and from 2014 to 2017, he was artist-in-residence at the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, as well as composer-in-residence at Salzburg Festival and Lucerne Festival. Matthias is also professor at The Julliard School since 2014 and is published by Bärenreiter-Verlag.