Maxime Pascal

Maxime Pascal, born in 1985, is a French conductor. He grew up in Carcassonne in a family of musicians, studied at the Paris Conservatoire and trained as a conductor in the class of François-Xavier Roth. In 2008, while still a student, he co-founded the ensemble Le Balcon, known for amplified performances that place the audience “inside the sound”, with which he has been performing Stockhausen’s seven-opera cycle Licht, one opera a year, since 2018. In 2014 he became the first French winner of the Salzburg Festival’s Young Conductors Award, and he has since conducted opera at La Scala, the Salzburg Festival and the Aix-en-Provence Festival, including Martinů’s The Greek Passion and Eötvös’s Tri Sestri in Salzburg. He has been chief conductor of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra since 2024, and from summer 2026 one of the principal guest conductors of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.