JEAN-BERNARD POMMIER is
born in Beziers, Southern France. He started playing the piano at the age of four and at seven gave his first public concert. Mr. Pommier studied piano with Yves Nat and Pierre Sancan and conducting with Eugene Bigot at the Paris Conservatoire. Later, he also worked with Eugene Istomin in New York. Having become, at the age of seventeen, the youngest finalist at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, he launched his remarkable career in the most prominent concert venues around the world and made his first recordings for the EMI label.
Ten years later commenced his long-term collaboration with Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker, with which he appeared in Berlin and Salzburg. He has also performed with eminent musicians such as Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Simon Rattle, Kirill Kondrashin, Michel Plasson, Kurt Sanderling, Václav Neumann, Leonard Slatkin, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, John Wilton Nelson, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Herbert Blomstedt, Myung-Whun Chung, Aldo Ceccato, Henri Dutilleux, Charles Mackerras, among many others.
Mr. Pommier gave concerts in world- renowned music centres such as London, Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Amsterdam, Paris, Moscow, Chicago and New York, as a soloist of the Philharmonic orchestra of the BBC, the
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestras of Berlin, Halle, Israel, Los Angeles, London, New York, Paris, St Petersburg, Vienna, Warsaw, Swisse Romande, among others.
His active career as a conductor is connected with some of the greatest orchestras in Europe and America – the symphony orchestras of San Francisco and Melbourne, the philharmonic orchestras of Radio France, Dutch radio, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Budapest, Paris, Lauren, Bordeaux, Lille, Toulouse, Monaco, RAI-Torino, Tonhalle Zurich, Leipzig – Radio, Belgian national orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, Mozarteum Salzburg, the Royal Philharmonic orchestra, the National Orchestra of France, the Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra, the Resident Orchestra – the Hague, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the London Philharmonic orchestra and others.
Mr. Pommier frequently takes up the dual role of pianist and conductor with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, English chamber Orchestra or Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia and Northern Sinfonia of England. His chamber music partners have included Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Leonard Rose, Jean- Pierre Rampal, Alexander Schneider, Paul Tortelier, as well as the Guarneri and Vermeer Quartets.
He has given master-classes in Chicago, London, Lausanne, Durham and Melbourne. Mr. Pommier was Artistic Director of the Northern Sinfonia and of the Festival de Menton, Principal Conductor of the Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino and Director of the Musikè Academy and a Visiting Fellow of St Chad’s College, Durham.
He is the recipient of the highest- ranking accolades of France – the Ordre du Mérite National and of the Légion d’Honneur.