Artistic Director

Selecting the repertoire, training the singers, leading weekly rehearsals and rehearsal weekends, bringing orchestral accompaniments to life at the piano, planning and preparing rehearsals with orchestras, conducting concerts, shaping the choir’s artistic direction and identity, maintaining relationships with institutional partners and professional musicians while promoting young talent, and working closely with the committee on administrative matters and concert preparations: these are the many responsibilities of an artistic director, requiring a broad range of skills and continuous dialogue.

Born in Annecy, Matthieu Schweyer took over as artistic director of the Ensemble Vocal Orphée in 2002. With EVO, he has conducted Cherubini’s Requiem; Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and St John Passion; Dvořák’s Mass in D and Stabat Mater; Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem; Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Requiem; Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice; Haydn’s The Creation; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; and Orff’s Carmina Burana, as well as works by Mendelssohn, Fauré, Schumann, Zelenka, Poulenc, Stravinsky, Puccini and Rossini, amongst others.

Matthieu Schweyer began his musical education at the Annecy Conservatoire, where he was awarded gold medals in cello and piano. He went on to earn a Concert Diploma and a Diploma in Piano Teaching under Sébastien Risler at the Geneva Conservatoire of Music. At the same institution, he also obtained certificates in choral conducting (studying with Michel Corboz), counterpoint, solfège and orchestral conducting. He also holds the French State Diploma in accompaniment and orchestral conducting.

Matthieu Schweyer is a professor of music and coordinator of the keyboard department at the Conservatoire of Haut-Bugey Agglomération in France. In Geneva, he directs the Ensemble Vocal Orphée. He divides his time between teaching and performing, appearing regularly both as a conductor and as a pianist, in solo recitals and chamber music performances.