Conductor Jonathan Girard always knew that music would be his life.Growing up in a musical home just outside Boston, one of Jonathan’s first memories is being held in his grandfather’s lap as he improvised tune after tune at the piano. He vividly remembers his first trip to hear the Boston Symphony and a performance of Debussy’s L'après-midi d'un faune.“The colours were incredible,” he recalls, “I knew then that I wanted to surround myself with the sound of an orchestra.”He began his musical training on the piano and took up viola, saxophone, clarinet and organ. He was always focused on conducting and earned his Doctorate from Eastman. Jonathan sees the orchestra as a community of collaborators – a place where each musician can contribute their individual artistry to a unified whole. Whether he’s leading a symphony in South America, an opera in Europe or working with students as Director of Orchestras at the University of British Columbia School of Music, he focuses on collective breathing, phrasing and nuance while inspiring musicians to sing through their instruments. He is an enthusiastic promoter of new and little-known repertoire, particularly works by female-identifying composers. He is involved in many interdisciplinary projects with virtual reality media labs and the visual arts. He engages with scholars exploring astronomy and earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences. Recently, he premiered a Noh opera by Farshid Samandari that integrated Japanese and Western classical music instruments and styles. Jonathan has also offered Canadian and North American orchestral premieres of works by John Luther Adams, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Navarro, Arvo Pärt, Francis Poulenc, Kaija Saariaho and Ana Sokolović. Jonathan is fuelled by an endless curiosity and a thirst for exploration. He has an abiding desire to find beauty and to make it part of his life, a longing to share music with the world. So it’s not surprising that off the podium, he loves to fly airplanes. “I love the freedom of being in the skies and seeing the world from a unique perspective,” he says. “I love that, like conducting, flying combines science and artistry and requires multiple skills. I especially relish being able to explore places I’ve never been before.”