Simone Young

Simone Young, AM, was General Manager and Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Music Director of the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg from 2005 – 2015 and is currently Principal Guest Conductor of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra and Chief Conductor Designate of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In 2022 she will become the orchestra’s Chief Conductor. She has conducted complete cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Vienna Staatsoper, the Staatsoper Berlin and Staatsoper Hamburg. Her Hamburg recordings include the Ring cycle, Mathis der Maler (Hindemith), and symphonies of Bruckner, Brahms and Mahler. Her Hamburg Opera and Ballet tour to Brisbane, (Das Rheingold in concert, and Mahler Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”), won her the 2013 Helpmann Award for the Best Individual Classical Music Performance.

Simone Young is regularly invited by the world’s great orchestras and has lead the New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Stockholm, New Japan, Helsinki, BBC and Dresden Philharmonic Orchestras; the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo; Orchestre de Paris;Staatskapelle Dresden; the Bruckner Orchestra Linz; the Barcelona, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, Minnesota and BBC Symphony Orchestras; the Bavarian Radio Symphony; the Deutsches Sinfonie, Berlin; the Wiener Symphoniker; the NHK Symphony, Tokyo; and the Orchestra Nacionale de Espana, Madrid. In Australia she has conducted the West Australian, Adelaide, Melbourne and Queensland Symphony Orchestras and the Australian World Orchestra.

A highly sought-after guest conductor at the world’s leading opera houses, recent engagements have included:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream,Das verratene Meer (Henze), Lohengrin, Faust, Parsifal and Salome (Vienna State Opera); Jenufa, Aus einem toten Haus, Tristan und Isolde,Fidelio, and Elektra (Bavarian State Opera, Munich); Tosca, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Tannhäuser (Berlin State Opera); Elektra, Fidelio, Parsifaland Lohengrin (Zurich Opera); Lear, Reimann (Teatro Real, Madrid); Elektra (Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm).

Simone Young has been Music Director of Opera Australia, Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Lisbon. Her many accolades include a Professorship at the Musikhochschule, Hamburg; Honorary Doctorates from Griffith University, University of Western Australia, Monash University and the University of New South Wales; the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France; the Goethe Institute Medal and the Sir Bernard Heinze Award.