Dmitry Vasiliev, artistic director and principal conductor of Siberian Symphony Orchestra
was born in 1972 in the city of Bolshoi Kamen in the Russian Far East. He graduated from the Rostov State Conservatory and then took a postgraduate course under the guidance of professor Alexander Skulsky at the Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory. He also participated in master-classes of Alexander Vedernikov and Vladimir Ziva in Moscow.
He has since been active all over Russia. In 1997 in age of 24 he set up the Tambov Symphony Orchestra in Tambov, south of Moscow, which he led as artistic director and chief conductor until 2005. While in Tambov he was artistic director of
the International Rachmaninov Festival, the Tambov Musicians’ Festival and the Musical Province Festival.
In 2003 he was awarded a diploma in the Fourth International Prokofiev Competition in St Petersburg.
In 2003–2005 he held the position of guest chief conductor of the Sochi Symphony Orchestra.
Since 2005 he has been principal conductor of the Siberian Symphony Orchestra in Omsk (it is known domestically as the Omsk Philharmonic), where since 2008 he has been an artistic director of the biennale New Music Festival. In June 2009 he took the Siberian Symphony Orchestra to Moscow to participate in the Fourth Festival of World Symphony Orchestras. Since then SSO under leading of Dmitry Vasiliev toured many times in Moscow (Tchaikovsky Concert Hall), Saint-Petersburg (Mariinsky Theatre), Italy, Austria, China and cities of Russia.
In Moscow he has conducted the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia, State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia “Evgeny Svetlanov”, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra; among the orchestras he has conducted elsewhere in Russia are the St Petersburg State Capella, Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic, Rostov Philharmonic, Ulyanovsk Phlharmonic, Voronezh Philharmonic, Caucasus Mineral Waters Philharmonic, Belgorod Philharmonic, Petrozavodsk Philharmonic, Tomsk Philharmonic, Khabarovsk Philharmonic and many others; internationally, in France, Italy, Israel (Israel Symphony Orchestra), South Korea, China and Poland.
The soloists with whom he has appeared include the cellist Misha Maisky, the pianists Daniil Trifonov, Denis Matsuev, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Nikolai Petrov, Eliso Virsaladze, Boris Beresovsky, Freddy Kempf, the violinists Vadim Repin, Sayaka Shoji, Pierre Amoyal, the trumpeter Sergey Nakariakov, soprano Hibla Gerzmava and others.
Among the world premieres Dmitry Vasiliev has to his credit are works by Mikhail Bronner, Sofia Gubaidulina, Ilya Heifets, Alemdar Karamanov, Ephraim Podgaits, Tolib Shakhidy, Andrey Tikhomirov and Mieczysław Weinberg as well as Russian premieres of music by John Corigliano, John Adams, Christofer Rouse, Woldemar Bargiel, Karl Jenkins, Benjamin Yusupov, Charles Villiers Stanford, Alexander Tchaikovsky, Eduard Tubin and others.
Dmitry Vasiliev has the recordings in the labels such as Toccata classics, Antes Edition, ArtBeat music. Norman Lebrecht and the magazine Sinfini Music called the CD from SSO and Toccata classics the Album of the Week: Norman Lebrecht is excited by a new recording of Mieczylaw Weinberg from the Siberian Symphony Orchestra, including the irresistible Polish Tunes. The Siberian Symphony Orchestra, conductor Dmitry Vasilyev, play as if their lives depend on it and the sound in the Omsk Philharmonic Hall is immaculate.
