Pascal Rophé is a conductor known for his interpretations of contemporary French works, several of whose world premieres he has led. He has served as music director for several major regional orchestras in France and Belgium.

Rophé was born on June 16, 1960, in Paris. He studied the flute as a youth and was quite a prodigy, enrolling at the Paris Conservatory for studies on that instrument around 1974. Rophé switched to conducting at the Conservatory and scored a breakthrough in 1988 when he took second prize at a young conductors' competition at the Besançon International Music Festival. In the early 1990s, he conducted Pierre Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain multiple times per season for several years, and that set him on a career path that involved contemporary music. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he conducted a number of important premieres, both orchestral and operatic, including those of the opera Luci mie traditrici of Salvatore Sciarrino (Schwetzingen Festival, 1999), Michael Mantler's Concerto for marimba and vibraphone (2005), and Phosphor, a percussion concerto by Johannes Schöllhorn (2006 at the Musica Festival in Strasbourg, France). Rophé has held regular guest conducting engagements with orchestras both inside France and beyond, including the National Orchestra of France, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. He served as the music director of the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra in Belgium from 2006 to 2009 and assumed the same position with France's Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire in 2014.

Rophé has greatly strengthened the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire's recording program, leading an album of works by Henri Dutilleux in 2016 to mark that composer's 100th birthday. The following year, he conducted a BBC radio celebration of the centenary entitled "Total Immersion Day: the Magical Soundworld of Henri Dutilleux." Signed to another three-year contract in 2017, Rophé has led the orchestra in several recordings for the BIS label, including, in 2020, an album of ballet music by Albert Roussel and Paul Dukas. Rophé continued to program and record contemporary music, including the world premiere of the symphony Âme by Philippe Schoeller on a radio broadcast with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in 2017; the work was commissioned by Radio France. He teaches conducting master classes at his alma mater, the Paris Conservatory. ~ James Manheim, Rovi