Samy Rachid
Conductor
French conductor Samy Rachid is opening the 2023/24 season as the new Assistant Conductor of Boston Symphony Orchestra under Music Director Andris Nelsons for a two-year term. He will conduct with the orchestra during the Tanglewood Music Festival 2024, followed by subscription concerts at Symphony Hall during Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2024/25 season.
In September 2023, he conducts the musicians of Orchestre de Paris and L’Histoire du soldat at the Paris Philharmonie. Other highlights include a remarkable debut with Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Tours Opera Orchestra and Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra.
Working as Assistant Conductor of the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg in 2022, he also was a Conducting Fellow of the prestigious Verbier Festival that year, returning in 2023. He worked there with such renowned conductors as Zubin Metha, Gianandrea Noseda and Klaus Mäkelä. In 2022, he participated in the Gstaad Conducting Academy, where he worked closely with Jaap von Zweden and became the first French conductor to be awarded the Academy's Neeme Järvi Prize.
Formerly the cellist of the Arod Quartet, Samy Rachid left that ensemble in 2021 to focus on conducting, winning 2nd Prize in the Tokyo International Music Competition for Conducting. The same year, he worked with France's Orchestre Elektra and was subsequently asked by the ensemble to become their music director for the 2022/23 season.
Since 2021 Samy Rachid has worked the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, Verbier Festival Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, Prague Philharmonia, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, Sinfonie Orchester Biel Solothurn, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse, and Hungarian Symphony Orchestra Szeged.
His journey as the cellist of the Arod Quartet allowed him to learn with great masters such as the Ebene Quartet and Artemis Quartet. In 2015, he won the 1st Prize and two special prizes at the Carl Nielsen String Quartet Competition and in 2016, the 1st Prize and two special prizes at the ARD Competition in Munich. He recorded several albums for Warner Classics.
Samy studied with Mathieu Herzog and assisted him with Orchestre Appassionato on several projects, mainly with prestigious singers such as Roberto Alagna, Ludovic Tezier and Nadine Sierra.
You can see Samy Rachid in action on Thursday 12 September at The New Zealand Herald Premier Series: Joie de Vivre