Principal Guest conductor, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

Founder and Artistic Director, Arch Sinfonia

Chloé Van Soeterstède is attracting the attention of orchestras across the globe for her intuitive, sensitive, expressive music-making and her commanding and positive presence on the podium. She is praised repeatedly for her attention to detail, her energy and enthusiasm, and efficiency in rehearsal. She is forging some excellent relationships with orchestras world-wide and in 24/25 she becomes the Principal Guest Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Recent highlights for Van Soeterstède include engagements with the Norwegian Radio Symphony, Gävle Symphony, London Philharmonic, Philharmonic, Hallé, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchestre National de Montpellier, Orchestre National de Lille, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y Léon, Real Filharmonia de Galicia and RTVE Symphony Orchestra (Madrid). In 2023 she made hugely successful debuts in Australia and New Zealand with the Melbourne Symphony, Adelaide Symphony and Auckland Philharmonia and in 2024 with the Vancouver Symphony.  Soloists with whom she is working include Sergey Khachatryan, Colin Currie, Alena Baeva, Kian Soltani, Jess Gillam, Javier Peraines, Peter Moore and Tobias Feldmann.

In 2025/26 Van Soeterstède returns to the BBC Scottish Symphony for a concert at Glasgow’s City Halls. She will close the season with the Orchestra of the Opera National de Lorraine in Nancy, return to the Norrkoping Symphony and to the Ulster Orchestra as part of the BBC Proms 2025. As Principal Guest Conductor with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, she conducts two mixed Franco-Russian programmes and will be joined by Anna Lapwood for Saint-Saens’s Organ Symphony. 

Van Soeterstède conducts a wide range of repertoire from Farrenc, Mayer, Beethoven and Mendelssohn through to Sibelius, Ravel, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov. In 2019 she conducted the world premiere of Benjamin Attahir's Syrian Voices in France, and regularly programmes works by contemporary composers such as Anna Clyne, Dani Howard, Roxanna Panufnik, Annamaria Kowalsky, Katarine Leyman and Anna Meredith. At the 2019 Deutscher Diringentenpreis in Cologne she was awarded the Bärenreiter Prize for the best interpretation of a contemporary work, as well as Third Prize overall.

In 2012 she founded the Arch Sinfonia, a chamber orchestra based in London, which has been applauded for its vibrant and boundless energy, its wide range of repertoire and its initiatives to build bridges between artists and audience. Van Soeterstède also loves to work with young musicians, and as such works regularly with specialist music schools and conservatoires across the UK.

Van Soeterstède was born in 1988 in France. After studying violin and viola in Paris and then at London’s Royal Academy of Music, she studied conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music with Clark Rundell and Mark Heron where she was awarded the Kennedy scholarship and was also supported by the Derek Hill Foundation. She was appointed the Taki Alsop Fellow 2019-21 by Marin Alsop, was a Dudamel Fellow with the LA Philharmonic in the 21/22 season and in 2023 she became an Associate Member of the Royal Northern College of Music. She lives in the UK with her partner and daughter, and is expecting her second child later in 2025.