Philippe Fournier was born in the Lyon region and started conducting at the age of fifteen. In 1984, he was awarded first prize for his conducting diploma at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and, in 1986, the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation prize. This gave him the opportunity to conduct various American and Quebec orchestras.
“A conductor’s art consists of an uncompromising respect for high standards, a baton technique and, above all,
a philosophical approach. His perception of music is sensory. He speaks to it, feels it and loves it. His duty is to
express and convey this love.”
He has an exceptionally open-minded approach to other forms of music and has become involved in many different styles: symphonic, baroque, opera, big-band jazz, musicals, traditional Chinese and African music, and hip hop dance. His interest in these different genres has led him to work with some of the greatest musicians and specialists, such as Alexandre Lagoya, Aldo Ciccolini, Didier Lockwood, Erik Truffaz, James Bowman, and the Shanghai National Popular Music Orchestra.
Over the last twenty years, pursuing his ideal of multi-cultural contacts and artistic innovation, he has performed more than one thousand concerts, worldwide, in countries such as New Caledonia, Canada, Greece, Morocco, Germany, Russia, China, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, the UK, Portugal, Austria and Slovenia.
In 1985 he founded his own orchestra, the OSL, which has become widely acclaimed for its high musical and artistic standards. A consistently open-minded approach reflects the orchestra’s fundamental credo that music is a passion to be shared.