Andris Poga
Andris Poga Conductor
Andris Poga has been the artistic director and principal conductor of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO) since November 2013.
In 2010, Poga won the 2nd Evgeny Svetlanov Conducting Competition in Montpellier (France), and this victory significantly changed the young conductor’s life. He was an assistant to Paavo Järvi, the principal conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, from 2011 to 2014, and from 2012 to 2014 he worked as an assistant conductor at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Recently, Poga has worked with the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich and has performed concerts and led masterclasses at Valery Gergiev’s Pacific Music Festival in Japan. His successful collaboration with Germany’s best orchestras also continues – in autumn of 2015 he has conducted concerts by the Northern German Radio Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg and the Munich Philharmonic. In March 2016 Poga debuted with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de France. He also collaborates with the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Svetlanov State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
The conductor ended the year in Osaka, where he conducted Japan’s customary performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. In February, Andris Poga had the opportunity to reunite with the Orchestre de Paris in concert at the Philharmonie de Paris, but in early May Poga teamed up with Baiba Skride and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in a programme of music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Richard Wagner at the Sydney Opera House.
From 2007 until 2010 Poga was the artistic director and principal conductor of the Professional Symphonic Band Rīga. He received the Latvian Grand Music Award for best debut in 2007 for one of his first concerts with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra.