Marc Trautmann was born in Bordeaux. After having studied at the Paris National Conservatoire and with Sergiù Celibidache at the Mainz University (Germany) and the Munich Philharmonic, he made his professionnal conducting debut aged 24 as the Assistant Conductor at the Orchestre Philharmonique des Pays de Loire in France, with which he gave some fifty public and educational concerts during the season. He then was engaged as assistant conductor at the Paris Opera where he worked on several major international productions, among which Peter Sellars’ spectacular staging of Messiaen’s masterpiece Saint François d’Assise with José van Dam, Dawn Upshaw and John Aller a.o.

His guest-conducting activities have led him to the following orchestras and operas worldwide: in France The Orchestre National des Pays de Loire, The Opéra National du Rhin, the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, the Bordeaux National Opera, the Marseille Philharmonic, the Marseille Opera, the Philharmonie Nationale de Lorraine, the Orchestre de Mulhouse, the Orchestre de Nancy, the Orchestre de Picardie, the Avignon/Provence orchestra. In the Czech Republic he was a guest at the Brno Opera; in Hungary at the Pecs Symphony; in Romania with the Filharmonica Oltenia; in Germany at the Young Philharmonic in Hamburg; in Norway at the Stavanger Symphony; in the Netherlands at the Nationale Reisopera (National Travelling Opera); in Bielorussia at the Minsk Bolshoi Opera; at the orchestras of Koszalin & Olsztyn in Poland. In New Zealand he guest-conducted the Wellington Opera, in Australia the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Orchestra of Tasmania. In the USA he was a regular guest conductor at the Portland Opera for some ten years, conducting important productions such as Dialogues des Carmélites, Faust, Roméo et Juliette, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Magic Flute, and the critically acclaimed American premiere of Reynaldo Hahn’s The Merchant of Venice. In Japan he was invited by the Tokyo National Opera (New National Theatre Tokyo), and in China he has guest-conducted during some twenty-five tours-five tours around the country during as many seasons: the Radio-TV Orchestra of Beijing, the Shenzhen Symphony, the Xiamen Philharmonic, the Kunming Symphony, the Wuhan Symphony, and the HeBei Symphony orchestra with which he also toured through France in the Summer of 2000, the very first time ever an orchestra from the PR of China travelled to that country. He was also a guest at the Taipei National Orchestra in Taiwan.

In September 2022, he was appointed Music director of the newly founded Hawkesbury Chamber Orchestra in Ontario, Canada, with which he gives regular concerts in Hawkesbury as well as Montreal, recently for the Saint-Eustache Opera Festival. The next concert in May 2024 will feature Fauré's Requiem with barytone Jean-François Lapointe, and Mozart's 40th Symphony. In Autumn the HCO will be the guest orchestra for the Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques (Young Lyric Ambassadors) annual gala in Montreal, an international program destined to boost young Canadian singers wishing to launch their international carreer.

Some special ventures:

Marc Trautmann has rebuilt the score and conducted the American premiere of Reynaldo Hahn’s Merchant of Venice with Alain Fondary as Shylock at Portland Opera, to huge international critical and public acclaim.

In Canada, he conducted the world premiere of the first-ever contemporary opera written for a modern Gamelan ensemble (the famous Toronto-based Evergreen Club) : How it Storms by Alan Cole.

He conducted the music for Walt Disney’s Fantasia with the Orchestre Philharmonique des Pays de Loire substituting for the sound-track, live and synchronically with the picture.

He supervised and conducted the first-ever tour of an orchestra from Mainland China through France in 2000.

He has also conducted to major international opera world premieres :

Snow in August, by Chinese composer Xu ShuYa, libretto and staging by famous Nobel-Prize winner for Litterature, Gao Xing Jian, with the National Orchestra of Taiwan – the first-ever contemporary Western-style opera written in Chinese language –. The masterpiece has been revived in January of 2005 by the Marseille Opera, to international acclaim and critical success.

La voie écarlate by French composer Jacques Castérède, on a libretto by famous French philosopher Michel Serres, with the Orchestre National de Bordeaux.