Australian conductor Simone Young is numbered among the most important conductors of our time. Since 2022, she has served as Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, where she is currently conducting, among other projects, a concert performance cycle of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen. In 2024, she made her debut at the Bayreuth Festival with this monumental work and returned in summer 2025 to conduct two further complete cycles.

Simone Young also leaves a strong mark in the symphonic repertoire and will conduct in the 25/26 season the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and, during a U.S. tour, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

Simone Young is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, an honorary doctorate from the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, and is a Member of the Order of Australia and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France. She has also been awarded the Goethe Medal and the Brahms Prize of Schleswig-Holstein. In April 2022, she was awarded honorary membership of the Vienna State Opera.