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Under the guidance of its professor, Laurent Gay, the orchestra conducting class at the Haute école de musique de Genève (HEM) is open to a select number of students who are aiming to conduct permanent or one-off ensembles of professional musicians.
The class offers them a particularly stimulating environment, suitable for developing the individual skills required to take on this demanding role. The discussions between the students are particularly rich and fruitful, with a real sense of class spirit.
Throughout their course, our students have the opportunity to work on a very wide repertoire in a variety of formats. The opportunities to play at HEM are many and varied, particularly with the HEM’s Workshop orchestra, which is regularly put at the class’s disposal, but also within the framework of the numerous projects initiated within the department of orchestra instruments, but also the department of composition and theory and the vocal department.
Several times a year, Masterclasses with renowned conductors are offered to our students; recent guests have included Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Emmanuel Krivine, Julien Salemkour, Yuri Simonov, Markus Stenz, Pierre-André Valade, Jean Deroyer and Peter Eötvös.
The orchestra conducting class also enables our students to rub shoulders with the professional world via various projects organised in conjunction with permanent ensembles such as the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève (OCG), the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie and the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire. Internships are also offered at great theatrical institutions (the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Opéra de Lausanne, Opéra National de Paris, Opéra National de Lyon, etc.).
Our students’ first steps into the professional world are facilitated by our sizable network of alumni, some of whom are enjoying very prominent careers, such as Domingo Hindoyan, Pierre Bleuse, Elena Schwarz, Michele Spotti, Jean-Claude Picard and José Eduardo Gomes.