Nicolas Ellis is Music Director of the Orchestre National de Bretagne, Principal Guest of Les Violons du Roy and Artistic Director of Orchestre de l’Agora, which he founded in Montreal in 2013.

The 2025/26 season sees Nicolas debut with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Hamburger Symphoniker, the Orchestra of the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Baltimore and Seattle Symphony Orchestras; he returns for subscription concerts with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Highlights of the previous season include performances with the Tampere and Luxembourg Philharmonics, San Diego Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and with the Orchestre Métropolitain, with whom he is a regular favourite.

Now in his second season as Music Director of the Orchestre National de Bretagne, together they’ll perform works together by Mozart, Brahms and Schumann, to Stravinsky, Bartok and Shostakovich; a programme centered around Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, collaborating with a local Youth Theatre; and an evening of folk music, featuring traditional folk musicians from Québec.

Acclaimed for his approach to the baroque and classical repertoire, his recent performance of Mozart Symphony No.25 with Les Violons du Roy was described by Le Devoir as ‘one of the most beautiful Mozart symphonies heard in Montreal in the last 20 years’.

At the Opéra de Montréal, Nicolas has led productions of Le nozze di Figaro, The Turn of the Screw, Poppea and L’enfant et les sortilèges. Elsewhere, he conducted Die Fledermaus at Opéra de Québec, Britten’s War Requiem at Graz Opera and a new production of Die Zauberföte at Opéra de Rennes.

Poetic elegance, an innate feeling for expressive nuance and the power to project bold, dramatic contrasts are among the arresting attributes of Yeol Eum Son’s pianism. 

She is highly sought-after on the international scene, praised for her refined artistry, breathtaking technical control, and a strikingly wide-ranging repertoire that spans from Bach and Mozart to Ligeti and Kapustin. In high demand around the world as a recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, she has built a strong reputation through frequent collaborations with many of today’s leading conductors, including Sakari Oramo, Antonio Pappano, Roberto González-Monjas, Ryan Bancroft, Maxim Emelyanychev, Edward Gardner, Jaime Martín, Andrew Manze, James Gaffigan, Andrej Boreyko, Jun Märkl, Alexander Shelley, Lio Kuokman, Pietari Inkinen, Jonathon Heyward, Joana Carneiro and Anja Bihlmaier. This season, she looks forward to forging new collaborations with Joshua Weilerstein and Thomas Søndergård. 

Highlights of the 2025/26 season included debut collaborations with the Danish National, Swedish Radio, London Philharmonic and São Paulo State Symphony, as well as her New York orchestral debut with the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center as part of Summer for the City. In the UK, return engagements featured collaborations with the Scottish Chamber and the BBC Symphony – the latter encompassing performances both at the London's Barbican Centre and on tour in South Korea – while Asian highlights included a return to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. In the summer ‘26, she returns to the BBC Proms for her second festival appearance, performing Gershwin’s Piano Concerto with James Gaffigan and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. 

During the 2026/27 season, Yeol Eum maintains a strong European presence through a series of distinguished debuts and high-profile returns. In the UK, she returns to London for two recitals at Wigmore Hall and appears at the Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, alongside a return engagement with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. On the continent, she makes her debut with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, play-directs the Irish Chamber Orchestra and returns to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw for her debut with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. She also revisits Amare Concert Hall in The Hague for another collaboration with the Residentie Orkest, following her successful tenure there as Artist-in-Residence during the 2022/23 season. 

In the United States, where her profile continues its rapid ascent, Yeol Eum focuses predominantly on the music of Beethoven during the 2026/27 season, marking the bicentenary of the composer’s death. A highlight is an ambitious project with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, performing all of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos within a single week. She also makes her highly anticipated debut at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s under the direction of Andrew Manze, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3, and returns to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with Piano Concerto No.1. Additional engagements in the US include a debut with the Minnesota Orchestra and a return to the Naples Philharmonic, as well as a series of recitals across both the West and East Coasts, further strengthening her presence nationwide. 

In Asia, she returns to the Singapore International Piano Festival with an all-Beethoven recital program.