Kent Nagano

Kent Nagano and the musicians of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal take unusual paths: a concert in a hockey stadium before an audience of 15,000, music at a school breakfast, a journey to the Inuit on Hudson Bay - with a new composition for throat singing, music and the sounds of nature.

From 2006 to 2020, Nagano was Music Director of the OSM. For one year, we accompanied him and the orchestra - from Montréal and the far north of Québec to Paris - and observed how this storied French-Canadian orchestra, under Kent Nagano, discovers a new approach to music-making.

Rehearsals and concerts with works by Debussy, Bruckner, Mahler and a concert performance of Olivier Messiaen’s opera Saint François d’Assise, a work of central importance in Kent Nagano’s biography, show how he creates the conditions for music to emerge.

A master in search of the unheard.