Olivier Cuendet

Origin

Lausanne, VD

Years active

1976

Genres

classical, contemporary classical, baroque, jazz, rock, folk

Instruments

organ, piano, keyboards

Biography

Olivier Cuendet is a Swiss musician, conductor, composer, arranger, and painter born on November 6, 1953, in Lausanne, Switzerland. He studied organ and musical direction in La Chaux-de-Fonds, earning his diploma in 1976. Cuendet further honed his skills in Italy, studying with Franco Ferrara in Venice and at the Santa Cecilia in Rome, and later in the United States at Tanglewood under Seiji Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein, as well as at the Juilliard School in New York. He also studied with Igor Markevitch and Rafael Kubelik.

Cuendet achieved recognition as a laureate of the N. Malko Conducting Competition in Copenhagen in 1983. He has since conducted orchestras across Europe, including serving as artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre de Caen in France (1992-1995) and the Västerås Sinfonietta in Sweden (1995-1998). He has collaborated with renowned soloists such as Maria-João Pires, James Bowman, Thomas Zehetmair, and Uri Caine. His repertoire spans from baroque to contemporary music, with a particular fondness for new compositions. He has premiered numerous works by composers like György Kurtág, Franco Donatoni, Olga Neuwirth, Pascal Dusapin, and Heinz Holliger.

Beyond his conducting career, Cuendet is also a composer, having written several pieces for ensembles. He has also had a significant career in opera, beginning in 1980 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, where he conducted a production of "Giselle" with Rudolf Nureyev. His operatic and ballet productions have taken him across Europe, South Africa, Brazil, and Switzerland. In 2006, he founded the ensemble baBel, with which he explores diverse repertoires through transcriptions, collages, and improvisation.