Facundo Agudin | Conductor

Facundo Agudin is a Swiss-Argentine conductor. After completing his master’s program in Conducting at Universidad Católica Argentina, he trained in medieval music and historical composition with Pedro Memelsdorff in Bologna and at Schola Cantorum in Basel. His six-year tenure as a member of the Schweizer Kammerchor, working with Tonhalle Zurich under renowned conductors like Claudio Abbado, Valery Gergiev, Armin Jordan, Sir Simon Rattle, Gennadii Rozhdestvensky, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and David Zinman, provided significant impulses for his development as a conductor.

In 2007, he was awarded First Prize at the Colin Metters Seminar (St. Petersburg Symphony). Based in Basel, he is the founder, artistic, and music director of Musique des Lumières. He worked as Principal Guest Conductor at the Armenian National Opera and was a Guest Conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Agudin collaborates with artists such as Ramón Vargas, Daniele Finzi Pasca, Kent Nagano, Marina Viotti, Giuliano Carmignola, Sara Mingardo, Rubén Amoretti, Sergio Tiempo, Michal Znaniecki, Marcelo Nisinman, Philippe Bianconi, Ophélie Gaillard, and Pablo Ortiz.

Agudin made successful debuts at the Mariinsky Theatre (Gounod’s Faust, 2014 and 2015); Enescu Festival Bucharest - XXI Century Composers (Würth Philharmonic, 2018); Festival Ljubljana (RTV Slovenian Symphony and Ramón Vargas, 2019); and Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Das Lied von der Erde, 2019). He recently conducted the acclaimed new production of Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires, staged by Daniele Finzi Pasca at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

He has performed with the Prague Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre Musique des Lumières, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Basel Sinfonietta, Kammerorchester Basel, TOBS-Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn, Würth Philharmoniker, Cameristi del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, State Opera Orchestra of Armenia, Kislovodsk Philharmonic, Polish National Opera Poznan, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, National Symphony of Argentina, Teatro Argentino de La Plata, CRT Torino, Orchestre symphonique de Besançon, Ars Nova Poitiers, Orchestre national de Cannes, and Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Tirana. Since his youth, Agudin has accumulated great experience in the choral repertoire: he has collaborated as a baritone or conductor with GCC Grupo de Canto Coral, Orfeón de Buenos Aires, Schweizer Kammerchor, and Basler Madrigalisten. In recent years, he was Artist in Residence with Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne (2020-2022) and was appointed Artistic Director of Basler Gesangverein.

On the contemporary opera scene, he premiered Der schwarze Mozart and Romulus der Grosse by Andreas Pflüger. In collaboration with Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel and supported by numerous foundations, he currently directs “Dürrenmatt 2021”, a contemporary music project commissioning works from composers Marco Pérez-Ramirez, Dominique Gesseney, Andreas Pflüger, Philippe Schoeller, and David Sontòn Caflisch. With the Dürrenmatt Project, Agudin was a guest artist at the first Biennale für Neue Musik Chur in 2019.

Together with Musique des Lumières, Facundo Agudin has recorded for Swiss National Radio SRF, NEOS Music, Oehms Classics, Doron Music. He collaborated with Universal Music Group and Ricordi Germany, publishing albums like Nuevo Tango Nuevo and the first recording of Johann Mayr’s opera Demetrio, Re di Siria. Since 2016, he has been an artist with Spanish label IBS Classical, releasing albums such as Bach Mirror, Generaciòn Cortázar, Dürrenmatt Project, The Brodsky Album, and a revised edition of Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, in collaboration with the Sacher Foundation in Basel. In January 2018, Bach Mirror achieved a 133,000 streaming-record worldwide, as reported by NAXOS of America. In 2023, two upcoming releases are scheduled with Musique des Lumières and IBS Classical: Das Lied von der Erde (Mahler-Schönberg) and An English Garden (with mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti).

Agudin dedicates himself to nurturing young talent: he collaborates as a guest professor at Buenos Aires National University, Music Director of ‘Sinfónica Patagonia’ with Río Negro National University, and Conducting professor with El Sistema (Caracas). He is a member of the “Hebdo / Forum des 100” and President of the Jury at CIML Concours de Lausanne. In 2015 and 2016, Agudin was nominated for the “Best Argentine Conductor” Award, alongside Daniel Barenboim, and was recently awarded the KONEX Foundation Prize 2019 as “Argentine Decade Conductor”.

Currently, Agudin runs the contemporary series Music & Words, in collaboration with Musique des Lumières and IBS Classical. The first three CD productions are dedicated to major literature authors: Julio Cortázar (published March 2021), Friedrich Dürrenmatt (autumn 2021), and Joseph Brodsky (January 2022). He has been appointed Artist in Residence at EVL Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne for the seasons 21/22 and 22/23. Agudín was also recently appointed Associate Professor of Music with Río Negro National University, Argentina. In the 2023-24 season, Agudin will make his debuts with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra for the Venezuelan premiere of Héctor Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette and with the Grand Théâtre de Genève for the new production of Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires, staged by Daniele Finzi Pasca.