Designated Music Director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu (season 2026/27)
Music Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Music Director of Tokyo Symphony Orchestra
Jonathan Nott was a solo singer as a boy treble (Louis Frémaux and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra), sang as a tenor at Cambridge University and studied opera singing at the Royal Northern College of Music. As Repetiteur at the London Opera Studio, he studied conducting with the English opera conductor David Parry.
His first appointment was as Repetiteur at the Frankfurt Opera under Garry Bertini, who also gave him his first conducting opportunity: La Finta Giardiniera, Heinz Holliger’s Beckett Trilogy, The Nose and Mahagonny. Whilst in Frankfurt he developed an interest in conducting contemporary music: Ligeti (first Hungarian production of Le Grand Macabre, Budapest Opera), Boulez (Ballet Béjart), Stockhausen, Lachenmann, Hosokawa, Eötvös, Gubaidulina, as well as many composers of the younger generation.
Jonathan Nott has held positions as Musical Director of the Lucerne Opera, Chief Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Musical Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain. He debuted with the SWR at the Baden Baden Festival with Elektra, and as Musical Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande initiated new productions of Rossini Barbieri, Debussy Pelléas, Parsifal, and Rosenkavalier at the Grand Theatre de Genève. He gave concert performances of Tristan at the Edinburgh Festival and Falstaff and the Ring at the Lucerne Festival with the Bamberg Symphony (Chief Conductor from 2000-2016).
During his 12 years as Music Director of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, he and Sir Thomas Allen directed a series of opera concert performances: the Mozart da Ponte trilogy, Salome (Asmik Grigorian), Elektra (Christine Goerke), Rosenkavalier and Schönberg’s Gurrelieder.
Jonathan Nott has an extensive catalogue of recordings, including the complete orchestral works of Ligeti with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Jonas Kaufmann.
His first recording with the OSR featured works by Richard Strauss, Debussy, and Ligeti (2018 Pentatone), followed by a recording on the theme of Pelléas et Mélisande with works by Debussy and Schönberg which received a “Choc” from Classica and the “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik” (the German Record Critics Prize).
