Oriol Sans has been named Music Director for the Life Sciences Orchestra for the 2011-2012 season. He was born in Catalonia, Spain, where he began his musical studies when he was five years old. He graduated in Orchestral and Choral Conducting from the Barcelona Conservatory of Music with Carles Comalada and Albert Argudo and received the school’s Honors Award in the specialties of violin and piano, as well as in Transposition and Accompaniment.

In 2006, as the recipient of the Dorothy Greenwald Scholarship for promising instrumentalists, conductors and composers, Sans became a student in Orchestral Conducting at the U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance, as a student of Professor Kenneth Kiesler. In December 2007, the Agustí Pedro i Pons Foundation in Barcelona granted him a scholarship for upper level musical studies. He received his Masters in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Michigan, and he is currently pursuing his doctorate at U-M with Maestro Kenneth Kiesler.

Sans has complemented his musical studies with masterclasses in Spain, Austria, Germany, England, France and the United States with Professors George Hurst, Denise Ham, Rodolfo Saglimbeni, Robert Houlihan, Salvador Mas, Jörg Bierhance, Jesús López-Cobos, David Effron, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Gustav Meier. He also holds a degree in Humanities from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and he completed additional graduate courses in musicology at the Autònoma of Barcelona University.

Sans has been conductor of the Mollerussa String Youth Orchestra, guest conductor of the La Noguera Chamber Orchestra, guest conductor of the Diputació de Tarragona Youth Symphony Orchestra, assistant conductor of the Feminine Choir of Barcelona Conservatory and conductor of the Eurídice Choir and the Lleida University Choir. He taught at the Mollerussa School of Music and at the Lleida Conservatory, where he conducted the Lleida Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, among other groups. In addition, he taught at Lleida University where he collaborated with the Aula de Música and the Musicology Laboratory.

More recently, at the University of Michigan, Sans has been assistant conductor to Maestro Kenneth Kiesler for the university orchestras and Music Director of the Campus Philharmonia and Campus Symphony orchestras. In April 2008, he was assistant conductor to Maestro John Nelson in Lisbon, with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, for a production of the Damnation of Faust by Berlioz. In June that same year, he worked as assistant conductor for the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris for their concerts in the Festival de Saint-Denis and in the Théatre des Champs-Elysées. He assisted and conducted a performance of two University of Michigan Opera Productions, Eugene Onegin in the Fall 2008 with Maestro Martin Katz and Marriage of Figaro in the Fall 2009.

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