Conductor Andris Poga is a promising figure among his generation of conductors from the Baltic countries, having gained experience with orchestras in several countries and learned to appreciate their varied ways. He became the music director of Norway's Stavanger Symphony Orchestra in 2021. Poga was born on June 29, 1980, in the Latvian capital of Riga. He attended the University of Latvia from 2000 to 2004, studying philosophy, but just as he was about to begin writing a thesis on Descartes, Kant, and Husserl, he switched to music and took courses as a trumpeter and wind band conductor at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, studying with Jānis Puriņš, and then worked with Viesturs Gailis as a student of orchestral conducting. After graduating in 2007, Poga immediately began his career as conductor of the Riga Professional Symphonic Band. He also made an appearance that year with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and earned a Grand Music Award for Debut of the Year. Poga continued to enter contests, and a first prize at the 2010 Evgeny Svetlanov Conducting Competition in Montpellier, France, boosted his career. Resigning his Riga job, he landed assistant conductor posts with Paavo Järvi at the Orchestre de Paris in 2011 and with the then conductorless Boston Symphony Orchestra the following year; Andris Nelsons soon came on board as music director. Poga maintained his ties with Latvia, conducting the Latvian National Symphony, the Sinfonietta Riga, and the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra, as well as a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Riga Opera House. He resigned his Boston and Paris posts in 2014, for he had been appointed music director of the Latvian National Symphony the previous autumn. During his tenure there, he led the group in recordings for the Skani and Ondine labels; for the latter, he conducted a performance of the Oboe Concerto of Peteris Vasks, released in 2021. That year, he left the Latvian National Symphony to take up the baton with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. Poga continued to record for Ondine into the middle 2020s, issuing an album of symphonies by Talivaldis Kenins with the Latvian National Symphony in 2022 and one featuring the Accordion Concerto of Arturs Maskats the following year. The year 2023 also saw Poga make his debut with the Stavanger Symphony, backing organist Iveta Apkalna on the album Oceanic and taking up the baton with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne to back cellist Edgar Moreau in concertos by Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Henri Dutilleux on the Erato label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi