- Biography
Sebastian ALMANZAR
Candidate of the 2027 Competition
Sebastián Almánzar serves as Assistant Conductor at the Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier Occitanie since 2025.
Recent engagements include his debut with the Royal Danish Opera and the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra conducting Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. He also served as Assistant Conductor to Marie Jacquot with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Euskadiko Orkestra, and to Marta Gardolińska at the Opéra National de Lorraine for Haydn’s The Creation.
In the 2024/25 season, he was selected for the Ammodo Conducting Masterclass with Paavo Järvi and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 2025, he was a semifinalist for the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival and a finalist in the 59th Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors. Earlier, in 2020, he was awarded Second Prize at the European Union Conducting Competition.
He has worked with the Spanish National Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, among others.
Born in Colombia, Sebastián Almánzar began his musical journey as a chorister and choir director before studying singing and later turning to conducting. He began his conducting studies at EAFIT University in Medellín and continued his training in Vienna with Professor Simeon Pironkoff and Andrés Orozco-Estrada. He holds a Master’s degree in Conducting from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.