Nicolas Simon

Principal conductor of the Orchestre de Caen, founder, artistic and musical director of La Symphonie de Poche, musical director of the Yellow Socks Orchestra, head of the Démos project, Nicolas Simon is a conductor who passes on his knowledge. He is constantly striving to renew the close ties between performers, composers and audiences.

After obtaining his Diplôme de Formation Supérieur in violin from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris in 2005, he joined the conducting class at the same institution in 2006. There he studied and perfected his skills with Zsolt Nagy, Arie van Beek, François-Xavier Roth, Pierre Boulez and Bruno Weil. He obtained his Master's degree in orchestral conducting in June 2010.

Between 2010 and 2012, he was assistant to Kwamé Ryan and Dennis Russel Davis at the Orchestre Français des Jeunes. In 2012, he assisted François-Xavier Roth at the Orchestre des jeunes de Méditerranée. During the 2012-2013 season, he was assistant to Kwamé Ryan at the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine.

Since January 2014, he has been associate conductor of the Orchestre Les Siècles, founded by François-Xavier Roth.

Motivated by an insatiable curiosity, in 2013 he founded La Symphonie de Poche, an ensemble with a singular and impertinent spirit. This atypical ensemble of thirteen musicians stands out for its unique sound. The ensemble's recordings ("Eh bien dansez maintenant!", alongside Deborah Nemtanu, released in October 2017, "Beethoven, si tu nous entends" released in December 2020 and "Furiant" released in February 2024) have been widely acclaimed by the critics (Le Monde, Télérama).

Convinced of the uplifting and structuring dimension of musical practice, he has been heavily involved in the Démos project since 2014.

In 2017, he took over as musical director of the Yellow Socks Orchestra, a symphony orchestra created by the company Ugo & Play and dedicated to music for the screen.

In November 2018, he founded a solidarity, humanist, altruistic, civic-minded and disinterested orchestra: Le Philharmonicœur. An orchestra that aims to combat social and cultural exclusion by offering, through the symphonic phenomenon, the opportunity to connect / reconnect to one's human dignity.

He made his operatic debut with Boieldieu's La Dame Blanche in Rennes, Compiègne, Quimper, Tourcoing, Dunkerque, Besançon and Saint-Céré, a work produced by the Coopérative, Les Siècles and directed by Louise Vignaud.
In the winter of 2023, he appeared at the Rennes and Nantes opera houses and at the Quimper and Besançon national stages, in Mozart's Zaïde / Melchior, again directed by Louise Vignaud. The work was revived in April 2025 at the Avignon opera house.
In May 2023, he conducted Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, directed by Daniel Jeanneteau, at the Théâtre de Caen with Les Siècles.
In December 2024, he will conduct Bizet's Le Docteur Miracle with the Orchestre de Chambre de Nouvelle Aquitaine in Bordeaux and Poitiers.

Nicolas Simon is much appreciated by the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Orchestre de l'Opéra National de Lorraine, the Orchestre National de Metz, the Orchestre de Picardie, the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Rouen, the Orchestre de Chambre de Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Orchestre National de France and the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse; and abroad, with the London Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Sinfonie Orchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra and the Palestine Youth Orchestra.

June 2024