Valery Gergiev

• Conductor

About

Maestro Valery Gergiev:
Music Director, Mariinsky Theatre
Principal Conductor, London Symphony Orchestra
Artistic Director, Stars of the White Nights Festival
Artistic Director, Moscow Easter Festival
Principal Conductor, The World Orchestra for Peace
Artistic Director, New Horizons Festival in St. Petersburg
Artistic Director, The Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam
Artistic Director, The Mikkeli International Festival
Artistic Director, The Red Sea Festival in Eilat, Israel

Valery Gergiev is one of the greatest  conductors of all time. As well as being one of the most highly sought after artists by the world’s top orchestras and opera houses, he occupies a unique, pre-eminent position in Russia as both the Music Director of the Kirov Opera and the Kirov Ballet and the overall Intendant of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, the Kirov Companies’ historic home.

Valery Gergiev was born in Moscow in 1953, but grew up in the Caucasus, the mountainous area at the Southern end of Russia, stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. He began his musical studies in Ordzhonikidze, the Caucasian capital of Ossetia, and showed early prodigious talent as a pianist before taking up conducting in his teens. He was accepted into the conducting class of Ilya Musin at the Leningrad (now St Petersburg) Conservatory, and whilst still a student won the All Union Conductors Competition in Moscow and the Herbert von Karajan Conductors Competition in Berlin.