Iouri Ivanovitch Simonov is a Russian conductor born on March 4, 1941 in Saratov, Soviet Union. He studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory of Leningrad under Nikolai Rabinovich, subsequently assisting Ievgueni Mravinski at the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra from 1969 to 1970. He won second place at the Soviet Union's Pan-Russian Conductors' Competition in 1966 and received the prize of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Italy, in 1968. He founded the Chamber Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow in 1979 and taught conducting at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory from 1975 to 1991, holding a professorship there starting in 1985. He began directing operas in the West in 1982, notably in London. In 1991, he directed Benjamin Britten's Requiem in Marseille, France, and recorded extensively for the label Melodiya. He became the artistic director and chief conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in 1998.
