Gergely Madaras

Gergely Madaras is Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège since 2019. He has previously held positions as Chief Conductor of the Savaria Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Orchestre Dijon Bourgogne.

Having forged strong professional relationships throughout Europe, Gergely regularly appears as a guest conductor with orchestras including the BBC Symphony, Hallé, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Maggio Muiscale Fiorentino, the Netherlands, Oslo and Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestras as well as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Academy of Ancient Music. Further afield, he has appeared with the Melbourne and Houston Symphony orchestras.

Gergely maintains a close relationship with new music and has collaborated with composers George Benjamin, Péter Eötvös, György Kurtág, Tristan Murail, Luca Francesconi, Philippe Boesmans and Pierre Boulez, for whom he served as assistant conductor at the Lucerne Festival Academy between 2011-2013.

Equally established in the operatic repertoire, he has appeared at the English National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Hungarian State Opera and Grand Théâtre de Genève. Future plans include his debut at La Monnaie in Brussels.

Born in Budapest in 1984, Gergely first began studying folk music with the last generation of authentic Hungarian Gipsy and peasant musicians at the age of five. He then went on to study classical flute, violin and composition, graduating from the flute faculty of the Liszt Academy in Budapest, as well as the conducting faculty of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he studied with Mark Stringer.