Franck Ollu was born in La Rochelle, France, in 1960 and studied music in Paris. In 1990 he moved to Frankfurt to become horn player of the Ensemble Modern, and now appears with them on a regular basis as a conductor. He made his conducting debut in 1999, as second conductor to John Adams for Ives’ Symphony No. 4 with the Ensemble Modern. In September 2000 he became Assistant Conductor for the Ensemble InterContemporain, a position he held for two seasons. Since then, he has conducted ensembles and orchestras throughout Europe, America and Australia. The groups with whom he has worked most regularly include Ensemble Recherche and Musikfabrik nrw (Germany), Orchestre du Conser-vatoire de Paris and Ensemble Inter-Contemporain (France), KammerensembleN (Sweden), Asko (Netherlands), Avanti (Finland), Remix (Portugal), the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Elision Ensemble (Australia).
He has championed works by many contemporary composers and recent premieres include works by Hans Zender, Peter Eötvös, Emmanuel Nunes, Brian Ferneyhough, Wolfgang Rihm and Heiner Goebbels with his opera Landscape with Distant Relatives. He has appeared as a conductor at the Berliner Festwochen, the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, Teatro Colon in Buenos-Aires, Musica Nova in Munich, Festival d’Automne in Paris and Musica Nova in Helsinki.
Last season Franck Ollu appeared with the Ensemble Modern for several performances of an opera by Olga Neuwirth, in Graz (premiere), Vienna, Cologne, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. He also conducted the London Sinfonietta and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Last year Franck Ollu was appointed the Artistic Director of the Swedish Ensemble for New Music KammerensembleN.