Symphonie à la française avec Nicolas Ellis

Nicolas Ellis is Music Director of the Orchestre National de Bretagne and Principal Guest Conductor of Les Violons du Roy. He is also Artistic Director of the Orchestre de l’Agora, which he founded in Montreal in 2013.

Nicolas Ellis is one of the most active conductors on the Canadian scene. He has conducted the Vancouver Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Orchestre de chambre I Musici de Montréal, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Opéra de Québec and the Opéra de Montréal. Internationally, he has appeared with the Graz Opera and the San Diego Symphony.

In the 2024-2025 season, he makes his debuts with the Tampere Philharmonic in Finland, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and conducts a new production of The Magic Flute at the Opéra de Rennes. In Canada, he makes his debut with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and returns to the Orchestre Métropolitain and Opéra de Montréal in a production of L’enfant et les sortilèges.

Among the musical encounters that have strongly influenced him are those with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchestre Métropolitain, with whom he worked as Artistic Collaborator, a position he held from 2018 to 2023, and with Raphaël Pichon, conductor of the Ensemble Pygamlion, for whom he was assistant conductor during opera productions at the Opéra-Comique, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Salzburg Festival.

At the helm of his Orchestre de l’Agora, Nicolas Ellis conducts a rich repertoire ranging from Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea to Mahler’s 3rd Symphony. At the heart of the Agora’s mission, Nicolas Ellis has set up musical creation projects with teenagers living with mental health problems, educational music workshops for children, and a monthly concert series at Montreal’s Bordeaux Prison. Still with l’Agora, he also presented the 3rd edition of the Gala de la Terre in June 2024, a major fund-raising event for environmental organizations working in Canada. The concert featured Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony and Le choeur des bélugas, a new work by composer Claudie Bertounesque using beluga whales songs recorded in the St-Laurent River.

Nicolas Ellis is the recipient of the 2017 Fernand Lindsay Career Grant and was also awarded the Prix Goyer Mécénat Musica 2021.

Raphaël Pidoux began his musical studies with the piano. He learned the cello with his father and entered Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris at age 17. He obtained a First Prize in 1987 and enrolled in Philippe Muller’s class for graduate studies. He then joined Jean-Claude Pennetier’s class on chamber music advanced skills, and Christophe Coin’s class on Baroque cello. He studied under the direction of Janos Starker in Bloomington (USA) in 1989. He is prize-winner of the Bach cello competition in Leipzig.

As the same time as his career with the Trio Wanderer, Raphaël Pidoux frequently plays with Christophe Coin, the Ensemble baroque de Limoges and the Mosaïques Quartet as well as with orchestras as Les Siècles and Rouen Orchestra. He gives concerts of Piazzolla repertoire with the accordionist Richard Galliano and in 2009, he plays in the Noureev choregraphy Bach Suite with Kader Blarbi at the Opéra de Paris.

Raphaël Pidoux is professor of cello at the Paris Conservatoire national supérieur de musique. He has found with his Trio Wanderer’s colleagues, a piano trio class at the Paris’ CRR which prepares ensembles for concerts and international competition.

Raphaël Pidoux plays on a violoncello by Goffredo CAPPA (Saluzzo 1680).