Biography

Jonathan Girard is known for his generous, sophisticated conducting and his boundless enthusiasm on and off the podium.  He is the Director of Orchestras at the University of British Columbia, Artistic Director of the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra, and principal guest conductor of the Athens Philharmonic (Greece). In the kaleidoscope of orchestral sound, he emphasizes structure, color, and nuance.

He is based in Vancouver, BC and is the Director of Orchestras at the University of British Columbia and Artistic Director of the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra. He appears often in the Pacific Northwest, with the Okanagan Symphony, Vancouver Island Symphony, and Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra.  Previously, he held positions with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (NY), Portland Opera Repertory Theatre (ME), and the Ohio Light Opera.

Girard prioritizes strategic, innovative, and long-range programming. Notable projects have integrated orchestral improvisation, visual arts, climate data, and technology, such as Slippages, a work combining ink drawings and data from the movement of glaciers, and Kamoi Komachi, a Noh opera by Farshid Samandari that blends Japanese and Western classical music instruments and styles. His programming seamlessly intertwines both new, underrepresented, and classic works, and has undertaken Canadian and North American premieres by Kaija Saariaho, Ana Sokolović, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price, Óscar Navarro, Arvo Pärt, Francis Poulenc, and others.

Girard’s work has been featured on TV on The National in Canada and broadcast on NPR (US), the CBC (Canada), and on four commercial recordings of works by Dorothy Chang, Stephen Chatman, Emmerich Kálmán, and others. He believes in the power of orchestral music to create and share beauty that changes lives. In addition to his position as Artistic Director of the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra, he maintains a significant presence at festivals, clinics, and masterclasses across the Pacific Northwest.

Girard holds a DMA in orchestral conducting from the Eastman School of Music, an M.M. from Boston University, and a B.Mus. summa cum laude from the Hartt School of Music.

Off the podium, he enjoys traveling the world, loves flying, and is a multi-engine, instrument-rated pilot. As in music, the detailed mechanics and discipline of flying lead to freedom, adventure, and poetry.