nicole
PAIEMENT
conductor
Biography
Conductor Nicole Paiement has been the Artistic Director of Ensemble Parallèle (EP) since its foundation – a professional ensemble dedicated to contemporary chamber opera and multidisciplinary projects. With this Ensemble, Paiement has recorded many world premiere performances, commissioned new works from composers of various countries, and toured in North America, Australia, and Asia. Ensemble Parallèle mounted the West Coast premiere of John Rea’s reorchestration of Berg’s Wozzeck in 2010, followed by performances of Philip Glass’ Orphée in February 2011, and the world-premiere performance of the chamber version of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby in February 2012. With Ensemble Parallèle, Paiement will be conducting the San Francisco premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar next February.
Paiement is also the Artistic Director of the BluePrint Project – a series focused on building new music for the city of San Francisco. These contemporary music events, sponsored by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, have highlighted many American living composers and culminated in various CD recordings. Since 1999, Paiement has been the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble. With this Ensemble, Paiement has recorded and commissioned many works. Paiement is also the Director of Ensembles at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she conducts the Orchestra, the Chamber Singers and the large opera productions.
Paiement’s interest in both vocal and instrumental music has led her to conduct and record many world premieres of operas. She made her Korean debut conducting in 2004 the world premiere of Chan-Hae Lee’s opera Back to the Origins and Nicola Le Fanu’s Old Woman of Beare. Since then, she has returned to Korea on many occasions. In her interest to work on interdisciplinary projects, she has collaborated with many dancers and media artists. Through these collaborations she toured with Ensemble Parallèle in Australia in Summer 2005 and participated in the Asian-American-Australian Sound-Dance and Multi-Media Connections. Paiement is also an active guest conductor.
