B i o g r a p h y
Maayan Franco is an Israeli-German Conductor residing in Berlin. As part of his vast repertoire outreach, Franco is dividing his time between Opera, new music, and concert programming.
Franco made his BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra debut in April of 2023 presenting four new world premiers in which “The BBC SSO strings gave a searingly intense account under conductor Maayan Franco, who captured the piece’s big emotions in expansive yet precise gestures” (The Scotsman). He also recently worked as the conducting fellow of the “Lucerne Festival” and was invited to make his debut with Ensemble Modern at Oper Frankfurt for their “Happy New Ears” series in February 2022. In January of that same year, Franco jumped in, with a two day's notice, for his debut leading the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra in a program presenting Franck's Symphony in D, and has recently returned for another engagement in January 2023 presenting Dvorak’s Symphony no. 9 “From the new world”. In addition, during the spring of 2020, Franco was due to make his Berlin Debut at Staatsoper Berlin with Staatskapelle Berlin, conducting some of the performances of the new Ballet by Sasha Walz - “SYM-PHONY MMXX”, but due to Covid-19 restrictions, his dates were postponed.
In 2019, being only 20 years old, Franco had the privilege of preparing the “ORF - Radio Symphonieorchester Wien” for Ilan Volkov on the Opera “The Outcast” by Olga Neuwirt in Vienna, as well as conducting the off-stage music at the “BBC Proms 2018” festival in London’s Royal Albert Hall for Straus’s “Alpine Symphony” and Mozart’s “Nocturno for 4 orchestras”. During the Summer of 2020, he conducted two new productions at the Jerusalem Lyric Opera Festival: Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” and Humperdinck’s “Hansel und Gretel”, He was invited again to conduct the new productions of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflote” in the summer of 2021 and “Rusalka” by Dvorak in the summer of 2022. In October 2019 Maayan made his debut with the Israel Chamber Orchestra, leading the main concert at the “Teder Festival” in Tel Aviv, and in April 2019 a concert dedicated to the repertoire of “Pierrot Ensemble”, highlighting the masterpiece “Pierrot Lunaire” by A. Schoenberg.
Since 2017 Franco has been working closely as the assistant conductor for Maestro Ilan Volkov. He had the privilege of escorting him in many high-profile projects including concerts with the BBC SSO during the "Proms” 2017, 2018 & 2019 Festivals, a Musica-Viva concert with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the opening concert of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2018 Southbank Centre Series, a staged production of six Bach Cantatas at Stuttgart Staatsoper, a production of Olga Neuwirth’s opera – "The Outcast" with Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien during "Wien-modern" festival in Wien Konzerthaus and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, a project with Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris, a David Lang opera production with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a Musical theatre production with music by Samir Odeh Tamimi, directed by Pierre Audi and accompanied by Ensemble Modern at “Festival d’Aix En Provence”, and “SYM-PHONY MMXX” - the new work by choreographer Sasha Waltz with music by G.F. Haas in Berlin Staatsoper with Berlin Staatskapelle.
Since the beginning of his career, Franco had the privilege of working with highly respected soloists such as Albrecht Mayer, Ilya Gringolts, Juliet Fraser, Otto Katzameir, Susanna Elmark, Andrew Watts, Steven Osborne, Salome Kammer, Thomas Oliemans, Carolin Widmann, Chen Reiss, Laura Aikin, Jarrett Ott, Kai Wessel, etc…
And due to his extensive work on new music, he also had the privilege of working with some of today’s most acclaimed Composers: Hugues Dufourt, Olga Neuwirth, Georg Friedrich Haas, Enno Poppe, Rebecca Saunders, Samir Odeh Tamimi, Julian Anderson, Juliana Hodkinson, Cassandra Miller, Iris Ter-Schiphorst, David Lang, Christopher Fox, Markus Hechtle, and many more.
Maayan started his musical education at the age of 5 beginning with percussion under Mr. Alex Nemirovsky from the Israeli philharmonic orchestra, After four years he began his flute education under Prof. Ruthi Ron. Maayan studied at the “Thelma Yelin” School of the Arts in Tel Aviv.
As a flute player Maayan played in many highly respected venues around the world such as the Berlin Philharmonie kammermusiksaal, UDK Saal in Berlin, San Jose Theater in California, etc. Maayan received many awards and scholarships from the "Hava Stern" foundation, the "Ronen" foundation, and an honorable diploma from the American Israel cultural foundation (AICF). In the summer of 2016, Maayan took part in the summer Masterclass on behalf of the Royal College of Music in London under the direction of Professor Susan Milan.