SEBASTIAN ALMANZAR

Sebastian Almanzar serves as Assistant Conductor at the Opéra-Orchestre National Montpellier Occitanie, a position he was appointed to in the 2025/26 season.

In December 2024, he made his debut with the Royal Danish Opera and
the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, conducting Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. Earlier that season, he served as Assistant Conductor to Marie Jacquot with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Euskadiko Orchestra, and to Marta Gardolińska at Lorraine National Opera on Haydn’s The Creation.

He was a semifinalist in the 6th Evgeny Svetlanov International Conducting Competition in 2026, as well as in the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival in 2025. Sebastian also reached the final stages of the 59th International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors in 2025.
In 2020, he was awarded 2nd Prize at the European Union Conducting
Competition in Bulgaria.

Sebastian has led distinguished ensembles including the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra, Orchestre
Philharmonique Royal de Liège, Royal Danish Opera, Vienna Symphony
Orchestra, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony
Orchestra, Opéra-Orchestre National Montpellier Occitanie, Colombian
National Symphony Orchestra.

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In June 2024, he was one of four selected participants in the Ammodo Conducting Masterclass with Paavo Järvi
and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He has participated in masterclasses with Marin Alsop, Roberto González-Monjas, and Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

Born in Medellín, Colombia, Sebastian began his musical training as a singer before transitioning to conducting, first in choral conducting and later in orchestral conducting. He completed his musical studies at Universidad EAFIT in Medellín before being accepted to the prestigious Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien (MDW), where he studied Orchestral Conducting from 2018 to 2023 under Simeon Pironkoff and Andrés Orozco-Estrada.