François Weigel
François Weigel (born 1964, Trier, West Germany) is a French pianist, conductor and composer. Biography. Weigel began piano studies at age four. At age 12, he played organ and conducted a choir which performed his own works. In 1979, he entered the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, where his teachers included Günther Ludwig, and studied composition there. He subsequently studied piano, harmony, counterpoint, analysis, and chamber music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where his teachers included Yvonne Loriod, Pierre Reach (piano), Jean-Sébastien Béreau (orchestra conducting), Bruno Pasquier, Jean-Claude Bernède, Maurice Crut  (chamber music), Annie Chaland, Alain Bernaud, Roger Boutry (harmony), Jean-Paul Holstein (counterpoint), Françoise Rieunier (analysis), and Alain Weber (composition). He had afterwards advanced studies in conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, where his teachers included Alexander Jenner, and at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. He has also studied with Bertrand Molia, Éliane Richepin, and Alexis Weissenberg. Weigel has had long-standing artistic collaborations with the "Flâneries musicales de Reims", and with the Paris Bastille Opera as chorus master. He performed with Ruggero Raimondi for the program "Le Grand Tour", which led to a  series of recitals with Raimondi. In other media, Weigel began a collaboration in 2010 with the journalist and writer Alain Duault for concerts in the French operas presenting the movies "On the steps of the great composers", and "Musical Promenades in European Music Cities". He appears regularly on radio and television programmes across Europe, such as "Le Fou du roi" with Stéphane Bern, "Carrefour de Lodéon" with Frédéric Lodéon on France Inter, "Fauteuils d'Orchestre" with Anne Sinclair, "Le Grand Tour" with Patrick de Carolis on France Télévisions, and "Le monde est à vous" with Jacques Martin on Antenne 2. François