Marc Minkowski’s family background is scientific, musical and literary. Originally trained as a bassoonist, he began conducting from an early age, studying with Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux Memorial School in the United States. At the age of twenty he founded Les Musiciens du Louvre, an ensemble specialising in French baroque repertoire (Lully, Charpentier, Marais, Rameau, Mondonville) as well as Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, Gluck, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. The orchestra now perform regularly in the most important French theatres (the Paris and Lyon Operas, the Châtelet, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Cité de la Musique, Salle Pleyel, the Aix-en-Provence Festival) as well as throughout Europe (London, Amsterdam, Madrid, Vienna, and Salzburg). Based in Grenoble since 1996, Les Musiciens du Louvre are associated with the city’s prestigious MC2 cultural centre. Marc Minkowski’s opera career developed rapidly and since 1996 Mozart’s operas have held a favoured place in his musical life : Idomeneo at the Paris Opera, Abduction from the Seraglio and Mitridate at the Salzburg Festival, Le Nozze di Figaro at the Aix-en-Provence festival in Tokyo and Toronto, The Magic Flute in Bochum, Madrid and Paris, and Don Giovanni in Toronto.

Since 2003 he has had a special relationship with Zurich Opera, where he has conducted Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo and Giulio Cesare, Donizetti’s La Favorite and Rameau’s Les Boréades de Rameau as well as Fidelio (2007) and Agrippina (2009). Future seasons will see him conduct Paris Opera, the Châtelet, the Opéra comique, La Monnaie, the Zurich opera as well as the Netherlands opera in Amsterdam. Amongst the great opera singers with whom he has regularly worked are Cecilia Bartoli, Felicity Lott, Anne-Sophie von Otter, Magdalena Kozena or Mireille Delunsch amongst others.

With Les Musiciens du Louvre he has continued to open up and explore the symphonic repertoire, a repertoire which now occupies an increasingly important place in his conducting activities elsewhere as well. During Autumn 2006 he toured Europe with Les Musiciens du Louvre, presenting the twelve London Symphonies of Haydn, as well as a tour to South America with Mozart’s final two symphonies (40 and 41). In addition to Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn and Brahms, he devotes himself to defending the works of the great French composers such as Berlioz, Bizet, Chausson, Franck, Debussy, Fauré, Roussel, Poulenc, Greif and Lili Boulanger. At the Sacrum Profanum Festival in Cracovie Poland, he recently conducted an all Gershwin programme as well as a programme entirely devoted to John Adams with Sinfonia Varsovia. Recent guest conducting engagements include the Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Deutschs Symphonie Orchester, the National Orchestra of Spain and the Cleveland Orchestra with whom he has a special relationship and who have invited him back for the 2008/9 season.

In 2007 he signed a contract with the French record label Naïve, and a first recording of Bizet’s Arlésienne and extracts from Carmen will be released in 2008 (the editor Naïve will also be publishing a biography of Marc Minkowski by Serge Martin). Previously, he made numerous recordings for the Deutsche Grammophon, Erato and EMI-Virgin labels. (Une symphonie imaginaire by Rameau, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein by Offenbach and Opera proibita with Cecilia Bartoli, Symphonies No. 40 and 41 by Mozart, an album dedicated to the romantic works of Offenbach and a DVD of the Salzburg performances of Mitridate).

In 2004, Marc Minkowski was named Chevalier du Mérite.