The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.

Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.

Daniel Harding is Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom in 2022 he celebrated his 15-year anniversary. In the 2014/2015 season, he devised and curated the celebrated Interplay Festival, featuring concerts and related inspirational talks with renowned artists and academics. As Artistic Director, he continues this type of influential programming. Harding is also Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for over 20 years, and Music Director of Youth Music Culture, The Greater Bay Area in China. The 2024/2025 season will be his first as Music Director at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Harding is a regular visitor to the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Dresden and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala. In the US, he has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony. A renowned opera conductor, he has led acclaimed productions at the Teatro alla Scala Milan, Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals. He was Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, the Anima Mundi festival of Pisa, and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Daniel Harding tours regularly with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing at prestigious venues all over Europe and the world, and has recorded several acclaimed and award-winning albums with the orchestra. His tenure as Music and Artistic Director will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. “It is increasingly rare that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only lasts for more than a decade, but keeps growing,” he says about working with the orchestra.

In 2002, Harding was awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, and in 2017 nominated to the position Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2012, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2021, he was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Daniel Harding grew up in Oxford, England, and played trumpet before taking up conducting in his late teens. He is also, since 2016, a qualified airline pilot.

Winner of the 2020 Credit Suisse Young Artist Award, Valentine Michaud is a saxophonist of extraordinary depth and versatility. Her performances expand the expressive range of the saxophone and her drive to push boundaries and explore new horizons has established Michaud her unique place in the ever-evolving world of classical music.

Recent highlights include debuts with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande with Maxim Pascale, and the Vienna Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Lucerne Festival, performing the saxophone premiere of Anders Hillborg’s Peacock Tales, as well as her debut in the Lucerne Symphony’s recital series.

Michaud has appeared on many of the world’s leading stages, including KKL Luzern, London’s Wigmore Hall, Grand Philharmonic Hall St Petersburg, Wiener Konzerthaus, and Tonhalle Zurich, amongst others.

Currently Artist-in-Residence with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Valentine is passionate about promoting the fusion of diverse art forms in her work. She is a founding member of SIBJA; a collective of artists which has seen performances merging painters, dancers, musicians and live electronic music in a variety of unique settings, such as the Waiting for Amon trilogy and short film Le Dialogue de l’Ombre Double.

Emmanuel Michaud is a French artist working with performance, videography and sound. Nourished by influences such as mythology, science-fiction, sacred chants and dances, contemporary music, rap, metal or aikido, he stages poetic narratives in strange and dreamy worlds.

In 2016, he founded the collective SIBJA with Valentine Michaud (saxophone), whose performance trilogy WAITING FOR AMON was awarded the Nico Kaufmann Price in 2018. Working with dancers and musicians, they played in Theater der Künste, Johanneskirche, ZHdK Highlights (Zurich), Festival de la Cité (Lausanne) and the 83d Musikwoche in Braunwald. Their short film BOTH was screened at the ELIA Biennial Conference 2020.

He cofounded the collective PHON3M with Kara Leva (vocals) and Stefan Kägi (piano); their first creation BLEACHED PATHS was performed in Baby Angel (Zurich) and Humbug (Basel). As a stage designer, Emmanuel Michaud worked with the Cie Operatic and with choreographer Diane Gemsch; as a sound designer, with Kara Leva and Nina Dmitrovic; as a videographer with Marina Mello, Akmi Duo and Tubbes Duo. The pieces born of those collaborations have been shown in ZHdK (Zurich), Bicubic (Romont), Le Reflet (Vevey), Sonohr Festival (Bern) and in the Grand Théâtre de Genève, where he assisted director Luc Birraux.