Matthias Pintscher is the newly-appointed Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony, effective from the 2024/25 season. At the end of the 2022/23 season, Matthias concluded his successful decade-long tenure as the Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the iconic Parisian contemporary ensemble founded by Pierre Boulez in 1980 and winner of the 2022 Polar Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy. Pintscher has continued and expanded the cultivation of new works by emerging composers of the 21st century, alongside performances of iconic works from the avant-garde of the 20th Century and led the Ensemble in the creation of dozens of world premieres, recorded CDs and led the ensemble on tours around the globe – to Asia and North America, and throughout Europe to all the major festivals and concert halls.

The 2023/24 season will see Matthias’ fourth year as Creative Partner at the Cincinnati Symphony, where he will conduct a new work by inti figgis-vizueta, as well as an immersive video-concert of Olivier Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles. He will also conduct the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie on tour, where he is Composer-in-Residence. As a guest conductor, Matthias returns to the RAI Milano Musica, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, NDR Hamburg, Indianapolis Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Barcelona Symphony, Lahti Symphony, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, La Scala, and Berlin’s Boulez Ensemble. Pintscher has conducted several opera productions for the Berliner Staatsoper (Wagner’s Lohengrin and The Flying Dutchman), Wiener Staatsoper (Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando), and the Théatre du Châtelet in Paris. He returns to the Berliner Staatsoper in 2024 for Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee.