Simone Menezes

Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes is a visionary musician, known for her creativity and innovative spirit, brilliantly combining classical and contemporary repertoire. As the founder of Ensemble K, as a coveted guest conductor with many of the world’s most respected orchestras or in her stunningly creative projects in partnership between music and other arts, Ms. Menezes has established herself as a rapidly rising artist of a new generation.

Simone Menezes has been invited to conduct orchestras such as the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National d’Île-de-France, National Symphonic Orchestra of Brazil, Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre National des Pays de Loire, and Orchestre National d’Auvergne. Simone Menezes regularly collaborates with the Philharmonie de Paris, both in the framework of education projects supervised by DEMOS and for symphonic concerts. In 2021, she conducts concerts focusing on the Amazon rainforest, in partnership with an exhibition of world-leading photographer Sebastião Salgado.

At the age of 20, Ms Menezes formed her first orchestra in Brazil, the Camerata Latino Americana, a group specializing in the interpretation of Latin American repertoire. The work and model of this ground-breaking ensemble received recognition from the International Society for the Performing Arts of New York. From 2008 to 2012, Simone Menezes was music director of the Unicamp Symphony Orchestra in Brazil, recording two albums of Brazilian contemporary music, which were awarded “Best Brazilian Musical Project” by the Association of Musical Critics of São Paulo.

Simone Menezes studied conducting in Brazil, then at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris where she graduated after only one year of study. She regularly received advice from Colin Metters in London and developed her repertoire during residencies with the Remix Ensemble (Portugal) and Ensemble Multilaterale (Paris). In 2019, Simone Menezes won second prize at Mawoma (Maestra Music and Women’s Competition) in Vienna. In 2020, she launched her new orchestra, Ensemble K, a flexible ensemble specializing in the larger chamber repertoire of the 20th century.