Peter Eötvös was born in Székelyudvarhely in Transsylvania on 2 January 1944. At the age of 14 he was admitted to the Budapest Academy of Music by Kodály. In 1966 a scholarship enabled him to study conducting at Hochschule für Musik Cologne. Between 1968 and 1976 he played regularly with the Stockhausen Ensemble and from 1971 to 1979 he collaborated with the electronic music studio of the WDR in Cologne. In 1978, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he conducted the inaugural concert of IRCAM in Paris and was subsequently named musical director of the Ensemble InterContemporain, a post he held until 1991. In 1980 he made his PROMS debut. Eötvös was Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (from 1985-1988), First Guest Conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra (from 1992-1995) and of the National Philharmonic Orchestra Budapest (from 1998), as well as Chief Conductor of the Radio Chamber Orchestra of Hilversum (from 1994). In 1991 he founded the International Eötvös Institute and Foundation for young conducters and composers. Being professor at the Karlsruhe Hochschule für Musik from 1992-98, Eötvös has been teaching at the Cologne Musikhochschule since 1998. He was appointed Officier de l'Ordre des l'Arts et des Lettres by the French Cultural Minister in 1988, was awarded the Bartók Prize in Hungary in 1997 and the Christoph-und-Stephan-Kaske-Prize in Germany in 2000. Since the same year he has been a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, the Szechenyi Academy of Art in Budapest and the Sächsische Akademie der Künste in Dresden.