Since 2013 Lawrence Foster has held the position of Music Director of l’Opéra de Marseille and l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, with which he toured in the summer of 2014 and conducted at the Kissinger Sommer and in China.
This season sees, among others, opera productions of The Magic Fluteat the San Francisco Opera as well as Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the l’Opéra de Marseille. In addition, he has been asked to conduct leading orchestras in Copenhagen, Brussels, Frankfurt, Cologne, Shanghai, Budapest, and Paris.
Highlights of the 2014/15 season included engagements as guest conductor with l’Orchestre National de Lyon, Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Beijing Music Festival, and Danish National Symphony Orchestra. Lawrence Foster also returned to the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig. In the summer of 2014 he conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Ute Lemper at the Edinburgh International Festival and the Tonkünstlerorchester Niederösterreich at the Grafenegg Festival.
Mr. Foster has been appointed Conductor Laureate of the Gulbenkian Orchestra following a hugely successful ten-year tenure as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor. Over the past ten years, he and the orchestra toured extensively with appearances at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest and the Kissinger Sommer Festival, as well as major tours to numerous summer venues in Germany and Spain with outstanding artists such as Lang Lang and Evgeny Kissin.
Mr. Foster’s discography includes a number of recordings for PentaTone Classics, notably a highly acclaimed CD of violin works by Bruch, Chausson and Korngold with Arabella Steinbacher, as well as Bartok’s Two Portraits, Ligeti’s Romanian Concerto, Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta and Hary Janos Suite and the Four Symphonies by Robert Schumann with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mr. Foster previously held Music Directorships with the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and the Aspen Music Festival and School.
Lawrence Foster has worked with a number of major youth orchestras including the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Orchestra Academy of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and the Australian Youth Orchestra. This season he conducted the orchestra of the Parisian conservatory in the Salle Pleyel.
In 2013 Lawrence Foster was awarded L’Orfée d’Or from L’Académie National du Disque Lyrique for his recording of Vincent D’Indy’s L’Etranger with Opera et Orchestre National de Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon.
Mr. Foster has conducted in major opera houses throughout the world. He works regularly at Hamburgische Staatsoper where he conducted The Cunning Little Vixen in the 2013/14 season to great critical acclaim. The productions of Rusalkaat the Opéra de Monte Carlo and The Flying Dutchman and Falstaff in Marseille in 2015 were equally successful. Mr. Foster also conducted the highly praised La Traviata at the 2015 Savonlinna Opera Festival.
Born in 1941 in Los Angeles to Romanian parents, Lawrence Foster has been a major champion of the music of Georg Enescu, serving as Artistic Director of the Georg Enescu Festival from 1998 to 2001. His latest Enescu recording – his own orchestration of the String Octet with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo for EMI – was released in spring 2009. In January 2003 he was decorated by the Romanian President for services to Romanian Music.