Sir Simon Denis Rattle OM CBE (born 19 January 1955) is a British conductor. He rose to international prominence during the 1980s and 1990s, while music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1980–1998). Rattle was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 2002 to 2018. He is currently music director of the London Symphony Orchestra, since September 2017. Among the world's leading conductors, in a 2015 Bachtrack poll, he was ranked by music critics as the world's second best living conductor.