Yoav Talmi, artistic director of the Orchestre symphonique de Québec since 1998, is well known on both sides of the Atlantic. He has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam; the philharmonic orchestras of St. Petersburg, Oslo, Stockholm, and Warsaw, as well as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Vienna, Prague, and Hamburg, the Orchestre National de France, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia in Rome. He has directed all the great orchestras in London and the radio orchestras of Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Holland, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. In North America, Maestro Yoav Talmi has conducted, among others, the orchestras of Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Montreal, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Seattle, and Vancouver.

Born in Israel, Yoav Talmi is a graduate of the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv and of the Juilliard School in New York. He won the Koussevitzky Prize for orchestral conducting at the Tanglewood Festival in 1969, as well as the Rupert Foundation Conducting Competition in London (1973).