Pierre Boulez (1925 - 2016) was a French composer, conductor and musicologist. He is considered one of the great universalists and avant-gardists and had a lasting impact on French music and sound art. He studied composition at the Paris Conservatory and in the 1950s was intensively involved with new music, musique concrète and serial music. He remained devoted to classical music, however, and conducted several times at the Bayreuth Festival, as well as several U.S. classical orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic.
Living in Baden-Baden, he founded and directed the Institute de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique-Musique (IRCAM) and the Ensemble InterContemporain (EIC) in Paris for many years. He was musical director of the Madeleine Renaud/Jean-Louis Barrault Ensemble at the Théâtre Marigny and participated in the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music as a teacher and conductor. He was guest conductor at the Bade-Baden Südwestfunk Orchestra, directed the Musikakdemie in Basel, and taught at Harward University in Cambridge/Massachusetts.
PS