The Buenos Aires-born Italian conductor and composer Emilio Pomàrico is widely regarded as one of the leading interpreters of contemporary music, of which he is a tireless advocate. He has dedicated his career to supporting new musical voices while at the same time forging lasting collaborations with some of the most influential composers of our time, including Carola Bauckholt, Luciano Berio, Pierluigi Billone, Unsuk Chin, Brian Ferneyhough, Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Luigi Nono, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Wolfgang Rihm, Kaija Saariaho, Rebecca Saunders, Salvatore Sciarrino and Agata Zubel. He has conducted numerous groundbreaking world premieres, including Emmanuel Nunes’s Quodlibet, Rihm’s Séraphin-Symphonie, Haas’s opera Melancholia, Ferneyhough’s complete cycle Carceri d’Invenzione and Finis Terrae and Hans Zender’s Logos-Fragmente. His long-term collaboration with the composer Georges Aperghis has resulted in works such as Situations, Études pour orchestre, Concerto pour accordéon and Migrants.
He works regularly with European radio orchestras and leading contemporary music ensembles, and was conductor in residence with the Ensemble Resonanz, with which in 2017 he inaugurated the Kleine Saal (Recital Hall) of the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie.
Highlights of 2025/26 have included performances with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra at Suntory Hall, Helmut Lachenmann’s Stimme with Klangforum Wien in the Vienna Musikverein, works by Brice Pauset, Vito Žuraj and Niccolò Castiglioni with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Berio’s Coro with Contrechamps and the world premiere of Myrto Nizami’s The Blue Window with Ensemble Musikfabrik at the Festival Présences.
Also active in the field of opera, he has conducted critically acclaimed productions such as Lachenmann’s Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern (Ruhrtriennale), Feldman’s Neither and Sciarrino’s Luci mie traditrici (Vienna Festival), Boesmans’s Pinocchio (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), Filidei’s L’Inondation (Opéra Comique), Lang’s Playing Trump (Hamburg State Opera) and Boesmans’s Julie (Opéra de Dijon) and collaborated with directors including the late Robert Wilson, Romeo Castellucci, Silvia Costa, Joël Pommerat, Sandrine Anglade, Achim Freyer and Philippe Quesne.
Emilio Pomàrico has recorded for Kairos, Neos, Wergo, ECM, Aeon and col legno. A CD of his own compositions was released by Zeitklang.
