An exceptional artistic talent from a young age, Grégoire Pont attended an animation workshop in Paris when he was eight years old and studied Norman McLaren’s techniques of animation dynamics. He went on to graduate from the Penninghen School in 1992 and directed his first animated film Le Concerto du Chat shortly after, with abstract shapes dancing to the sounds of the Orchestre de Paris playing at Salle Pleyel.
A great lover of classical music, Pont has always been passionate about making it 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. He has appeared at the London Royal Festival Hall, Paris Philharmonie, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Tokyo Suntory Hall and Gothenburg Concert Hall, collaborating with conductors such as Kent Nagano, Kazushi Ono, Stéphane Denève, François-Xavier Roth and Dalia Stasevska. Recent highlights include Peter and the Wolf at Théâtre des Champs Elysées and Our Precious Planet – a piece exploring the effects of human activity on our environment, in co-production with the Barbican Centre and Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne.
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 of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges and L’Heure Espagnole at Opéra National de Lyon. Their unique approach has led to further presentations of these productions around the world, including Semperoper Dresden, Opéra de Lille, Royal Opera House Muscat and the San Francisco and Cincinnati symphony orchestras. Most recently they have achieved great success with titles including Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen for Opéra National du Rhin, Emma Bovary for National Ballet of Canada and Candide for Welsh National Opera.
Pont also illustrates books for children, most notably Les Excalibrius, and has made numerous animations for TV commercials, educational animated shorts and music video clips. For three seasons, he worked with François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles on Presto!, an animated series of musical works seen by over three million viewers on weekly primetime television.
