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.