Chloé Van Soeterstède

Chloé Van Soeterstède is attracting the attention of orchestras across the globe for her intuitive, sensitive, expressive music-making and her commanding and positive presence on the podium. She is praised repeatedly for her eye for detail, her energy and enthusiasm, efficiency in rehearsal and musical intelligence. She is forging excellent relationships with orchestras world-wide and 26/27 marks her third season as Principal Guest Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Recent highlights for Van Soeterstède include engagements with the Norwegian Radio Symphony, Gävle Symphony, Norrkoping Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, Hallé, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchestre National de Montpellier, Orchestra of the Opera National de Lorraine, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y Léon, and RTVE Symphony Orchestra (Madrid). In 2023 she made hugely successful debuts in Australia and New Zealand with the Melbourne Symphony, Adelaide Symphony and Auckland Philharmonia and in North America recent successes have included engagements with the San Francisco Symphony, Vancouver Symphony and Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center. Soloists with whom she is working include Simone Lamsma, Sergey Khachatryan, Alena Baeva, Stella Chen, Cedric Tiberghien, Javier Peraines, Kian Soltani, Colin Currie and Peter Moore.

Van Soeterstède’s 26/27 season includes debuts across Europe with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, the Tampere Philharmonic and Stavanger Symphony orchestras, in Spain with the Bilbao Symphony, Valencia Orchestra and at the Palau de la Musica, Barcelona, with the Franz Schubert Filarmonia, and in the US with the Oregon and Jacksonville Symphony orchestras. Her return engagements include the Ulster Orchestra, Real Filarmonia de Galicia, Rheinische Philharmonic and Orchestre Philharmonique de Liege. She also appears three times during the season with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Van Soeterstède conducts a wide range of repertoire from Farrenc, Mayer, Beethoven and Mendelssohn through to Sibelius, Ravel, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov. In 2019 she conducted the world premiere of Benjamin Attahir's Syrian Voices in France, and regularly programmes works by contemporary composers such as Anna Clyne, Dani Howard, Roxanna Panufnik, Annamaria Kowalsky, Katarine Leyman and Anna Meredith. At the 2019 Deutscher Diringentenpreis in Cologne she was awarded the Bärenreiter Prize for the best interpretation of a contemporary work, as well as Third Prize overall.

In 2012 she founded the Arch Sinfonia, a chamber orchestra based in London, which has been applauded for its vibrant and boundless energy, its wide range of repertoire and its initiatives to build bridges between artists and audience. Van Soeterstède also loves to work with young musicians, and as such works regularly with specialist music schools and conservatoires across the UK and US.

Van Soeterstède was born in 1988 in France. After studying violin and viola in Paris and then at London’s Royal Academy of Music, she studied conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music with Clark Rundell and Mark Heron where she was awarded the Kennedy scholarship and was also supported by the Derek Hill Foundation. She was appointed the Taki Alsop Fellow 2019-21 by Marin Alsop, was a Dudamel Fellow with the LA Philharmonic in the 21/22 season and in 2023 she became an Associate Member of the Royal Northern College of Music. She lives in the UK with her partner and two daughters.