Laurent Petitgirard is a French contemporary composer known for his orchestral works and his numerous scores for TV and film. He is also a highly respected conductor and has worked with several major orchestras in France and abroad including the Orchestre Colonne, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and the Utah Symphony. He was born in Paris in 1950 to a musical family, and he showed an interest in music from a very young age. At three years old, he began learning the piano from his father Serge Petitgirard, and when he was seven, he started to study composition with his older brother Alain Kremski. In the late 1960s, Petitgirard was in a jazz trio that performed nightly on the TV talk show Passez Done Me Voir, and he also played in the experimental rock group Quartet Experience. He was heavily influenced by jazz and rock artists such as Frank Zappa, King Crimson, and Gil Evans. Some of his earliest recordings include the pop-jazz albums Pop Instrumentale de France, and Suite Epique, both from the early '70s. However, this experience led Petitgirard to abandon those genres and he devoted his time to composing classical works and film music thereafter. He founded the Orchestre Symphonique Français in 1989 and served as its conductor and musical director until 1996. During this time, he conducted several premieres of his works, including Le Marathon, the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Suite Symphonique de Lacenaire, and Suite Symphonique de la Belle Époque. In 1998 he completed his first opera, Joseph Merrick dit Elephant Man, which he recorded with Nathalie Stutzmann and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo in 2004 on the Naxos label, and he was also appointed conductor of the Colonne Orchestra. His second opera, Guru, was completed in 2010, and a recording of the work was released by Naxos in 2011. From 2013 to 2015, he taught film score composition courses at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. He left his position with the Orchestre Colonne in 2018, so he could work as a guest conductor and focus more on composing. He also conducted the world premiere of Guru in Poland at the Szczecin Castle Opera. 2010s works include the Souen Wou K'ong oboe concerto, and the ballet Si Yeou Ki - The Journey to the West, which was recorded in 2023. Petitgirard resides in Paris and remains very active as a composer and guest conductor. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi

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Laurent Petitgirard

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