SIMON GAUDENZ won the prestigious 2009 "Deutscher Dirigentenpreis" ("German Conductor Prize"). Known for his extensive classical, romantic and contemporary repertoire, he is frequently invited to conduct the leading European orchestras, including the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the National Philharmonic of Russia, the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the philharmonic orchestras of Monte-Carlo, Luxembourg, Bremen, Stuttgart and Württemberg, the National Orchestra of Lyon, the state orchestras of Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Zurich New Music Ensemble, the St. Petersburg State Hermitage Orchestra, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Salzburg Mozarteum.

The 2010-11 season will be Simon Gaudenz's last after seven years as music director of the Collegium Musicum in Basel. This season will also see him become principal guest conductor of the Odense Symphony Orchestra in Denmark.

Prior to taking up his position with the Collegium Musicum Simon spent four years as music director of Basel's Camerata Variabile. He made his opera début in 2003 with Honegger's "Les Aventures du Roi Pausole" and was subsequently engaged to conduct a new production of Strauss's "Night in Venice" in Switzerland, and Verdi's "La Traviata" at the Altenburg-Gera Opera House in Germany.

Simon Gaudenz has received many prizes and awards, including first prize in the 2006 Gennady Rozhdestvensky International Conducting Competition and the "Akademie Musiktheater Heute" scholarship in 2005. In 2004 he was accepted into the highly competitive conductor training program sponsored by the German National Music Council (the Dirigentenforum Deutsche Musikrat). Simon Gaudenz is a three-time recipient of the Swiss Aargauer Cultural Foundation artist award, most recently receiving the prize in 2009.

A native of Basel, Switzerland, Simon Gaudenz studied clarinet in addition to pursuing composition studies with Peter Benary and Dieter Ammann. He studied conducting in Freiburg and Salzburg and during his training worked with Dennis Russell Davies, David Zinman, Jorge Rotter, Scott Sandmeier, Kurt Masur, Eliahu Inbal, Leon Fleisher, Arnold Östman, Reinhard Goebel and Wolf-Dieter Hauschild.

Simon Gaudenz currently lives in Munich.