Short Bio:

Ghassan Alaboud is a Canadian conductor and pianist whose work is distinguished by clarity of gesture, structural insight, and an intense commitment to musical communication. Active across symphonic, choral, and operatic repertoire, he is particularly valued for his ability to shape long musical lines while maintaining rhythmic precision and expressive flexibility.

He currently serves as music director and principal conductor of several orchestras in the Netherlands and has appeared with ensembles across Europe and North America. His performances are marked by focused rehearsals, strong ensemble cohesion, and an interpretive approach that balances architectural thinking with emotional immediacy.

From classical masterworks to contemporary repertoire, he approaches each performance with clarity, conviction, and an instinct for musical storytelling.

Artistic statement:

I see the conductor not as a neutral transmitter, but as an active artistic voice who shapes context, asks uncomfortable questions, and creates conditions for music to speak with urgency now.

My work often begins with risk: rethinking familiar repertoire, placing canonical works in dialogue with contemporary or cross-cultural voices, and exploring formats that challenge traditional concert hierarchies. I am drawn to programs that expose tension between past and present, structure and freedom, refinement and rawness, while remaining deeply grounded in rigorous score study and technical discipline.

I work with orchestras of different backgrounds and levels, believing that depth of interpretation is not reserved for elite institutions. Precision, imagination, and urgency can be cultivated anywhere when musicians are invited into a shared responsibility for meaning rather than execution alone.

My rehearsal process prioritizes listening before authority, and understanding before control. I aim to create performances in which musicians play not because they are instructed to, but because they are persuaded and actively participating in a collective act of thinking, shaping, and risk-taking.

I am particularly drawn to projects that place canonical works in dialogue with contemporary voices, visual elements, or conceptual frameworks which are not meant as decorations, but as a means of re-examining how these works speak to the present and to contemporary audiences.

Conducting, for me, is not about interpretation alone. It is about positioning music, and musicians, within the world they inhabit now.