Stéphane Denève is music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the New World Symphony, and principal guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.
Previously, he stood at the helm of the Brussels Philharmonic, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (SWR) and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Denève conducted opera productions at London's Royal Opera, the Opéra National de Paris, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Scala in Milan, La Monnaie in Brussels and Dutch National Opera. He is a regular guest conductor with orchestras such as the Wiener Symphoniker, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Boston and Chicago and The Cleveland Orchestra,
Since his first appearance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2013, when he conducted Frank Martin’s Golgotha, Denève has been a regular guest. In 2018 he conducted Honegger’s Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher, the recording of which appeared on RCO Live and was highly praised by critics worldwide. In 2019 he led the Concertgebouw Orchestra in a Dutch National Opera production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. In September 2025, Denève conducted the orchestra’s Opening Night concert at the Sloterpark in Amsterdam’s Nieuw-West district.
Born in Tourcoing in the north of France, Denève graduated at the Paris Conservatoire and early on in his career worked with conductors such as Georg Solti, Georges Prêtre and Seiji Ozawa.