Grégoire Pont

Grégoire Pont was born in Paris in 1969. An exceptional artistic talent, from the tender age of eight he attended the Animation Workshop in Paris where he studied Norman McLaren’s techniques of animation dynamics.

Pont has always been passionate about making classical music more popular and accessible to both children and adults by means of animation. He developed a new performance concept called Cinesthetics, where he draws and animates live to a musical performance.

Recent Cinesthetic performances include Ravel’s Ma mère l’oye at the London Royal Festival Hall, Paris Philharmonie and Frankfurt Alte Oper; Schönberg’s Gurrelieder and Elgar’s Enigma Variations in Gothenburg; Debussy’s La mer at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall and Saint-Saens’ Le carnival des animaux with Les Siècles.

Pont has also received great acclaim for bringing his innovative animation techniques to the operatic repertoire. Together with British director James Bonas he conceived productions at Opéra de Lyon of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges and L’heure espagnole, and has premiered a new production of Orff’s Der Mond. The dramatic success of L’Enfant resulted in a revival in 2019 with San Francisco Symphony and performances at Oman’s Royal Opera House, Limoges Opera and Cincinnati Symphony. Pont also created animations for the semi-staging of Bizet’s Carmen for Orchestre National de Lille.