Conductor Marc Soustrot specializes in the orchestral music of his native France. In various phases of his career, he has often led performances of opera and contemporary music.

Soustrot was born in Lyon, France, on April 15, 1949. His younger brother is trumpeter Bernard Soustrot. Marc attended the Conservatoire de Lyon, studying trombone and piano. He continued these studies at the Conservatoire de Paris but added conducting courses with Manuel Rosenthal and Georges Tzipine, and he steadily grew more interested in that discipline. In the early 1970s, he won a contest that led to his being named as the assistant conductor to André Previn at the London Symphony Orchestra. Awards, including top prizes at the Rupert Fondation de Londres International Competition and the Besançon International Music Festival, led to further posts. In 1976, he was named the deputy conductor of the Orchestre Philharmonique des Pays de la Loire and was quickly elevated to chief conductor. He remained in that post until 1994. In 1996, he became the chief conductor of the Beethovenhalle Orchestra in Bonn and the Brabant Orkest in Eindhoven, Netherlands. In the 2010s, Soustrot served as chief conductor of the Malmö Symphony in Sweden and the Aarhus Symphony in Denmark while still making guest appearances with his former ensembles. Especially during the first part of his career, he often programmed contemporary music, leading premieres of works by such composers as Claude Ballif, Alain Louvier, and Maurice Ohana. In later years, he has begun to conduct opera frequently, appearing at such major German houses as the Semperoper in Dresden, the Staatsoper Stuttgart, and Oper Frankfurt.

Soustrot has made more than 30 recordings, including both orchestral music and opera. With the Orchestre Philharmonique des Pays de la Loire, he made several recordings of French and Russian music for the Disques Pierre Verany label. Recording for the MDG label, he made his debut in opera in 2001 with a performance of Ernest Krenek's Karl V; he also recorded orchestral music for the label. In the 2010s, Soustrot led the Malmö Symphony in a complete cycle of the symphonies of Saint-Saëns; those were collected and issued as a box set in 2021. ~ James Manheim, Rovi