Born in 1991, Marc Leroy-Calatayud studied piano from the age of 11 in Lausanne. At 17, he directed his first opera, a production of Jacques Offenbach's Voyage dans la lune. 

 

Marc Leroy-Calatayud studied conducting in Vienna with Mark Stringer (MDW) and in Freiburg (D) with Scott Sandmeier, and also benefited from the teaching of other conductors in masterclasses, recently Johannes Schlaefli, Bertrand de Billy or Nicolás Pasquet and the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2009, he founded the Quipasseparlà Orchestra, a symphony orchestra of young musicians; since then he has collaborated with the Pro Arte Orchester (Vienna), the Freiburger Kammerphilharmonie, the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, the Sinfonico Laredo and the Valsassina Ensemble, with whom he made his debut at the Musikverein in Vienna in March 2014 and toured Mexico. 

 

In June 2013, he won the Ernst Göhner scholarship for young artists; a collaboration with the troupe Fri'bouffes enabled him to direct a Swiss production of Kurt Weill's Die Sieben Todsünden in September of the same year. He also regularly works as assistant conductor on opera productions, most recently Das schlaue Füchslein, Il Barbiere di Siviglia. At the Verbier Festival 2014, he assists Maestro Ivan Fischer and conducts the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Mahler's 6th during rehearsals. He also made his debut as a conductor at the Verbier Festival, conducting the VFO Camerata in two Windows concerts.

 

A major concern in his work is to find ways to make so-called classical music accessible to all. To this end, he founded a new professional ensemble in September 2014, L'Ensemble Nomade. In its first production, Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, staged and performed through the small municipalities of the canton of Vaud (CH). He is currently working on an adaptation of Carmen for the street.