Vasily Petrenko has been the music director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra since 2021. He was named conductor laureate of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra after his hugely acclaimed 15-year tenure as their chief conductor from 2006 to 2021. In addition, he has been the principal conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra since 2015, the associate conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Castilla y León, and he was the principal conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra from 2013 to 2020 and principal conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain from 2009 to 2013.
He has collaborated with the world's most prestigious orchestras and is equally at home in the opera house, with a repertoire of over 30 operas. He has established a strongly defined profile as a recording artist and won the Artist of the Year Award at the prestigious Gramophone award ceremony in September 2017. He won the Male Artist of the Year Award in the Classical BRIT Awards in 2010, and he is the second person to receive honorary doctorates from both the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University (in 2009), as well as the Honorary Fellowship of the University John Moores of Liverpool (in 2012).