Born in 1981 in Northern Germany, Lars Straehler-Pohl initially received piano lessons, later switching to cello. He gained orchestral experience as a cellist in the RIAS Youth Orchestra under Ingo Metzmacher and Herbert Blomstedt. Concert engagements have taken him to the USA and China. Straehler-Pohl received formative artistic impulses for his conducting training in Jukka-Pekka Saraste's LEAD program and in the conducting seminar with Kurt Masur.
Lars Straehler-Pohl has conducted, among other works, early American avant-garde music at the Aurora Music Festival in Stockholm, the chamber orchestra in Britten's War Requiem for its 50th anniversary at Berlin Cathedral, and the musical homage to the Voyager Interstellar mission in the Great Refractor telescope in Potsdam. He has composed works for orchestra, chamber music, and audiovisual pieces. Straehler-Pohl is a prize winner of the Engelbert Humperdinck International Composition Competition and the Tübingen Philharmonic Composition Prize.

In parallel, he completed his studies in philosophy, psychology, and modern history at the Free University of Berlin and graduated from the School of Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam. Levels of sensory experience are the subject of his international publications and his teaching as a lecturer in aesthetics. The passionate private pilot and skydiver also regularly trains aviation specialists on aspects of human influence in aviation.

Lars Straehler-Pohl is passionate about reviving lesser-known symphonic works and forgotten operas. He re-orchestrated Albéric Magnard's opera Yolande, which was destroyed in a fire along with its composer in 1914, and gave its German premiere in 2018 with the Privatoper Berlin. He has also conducted world premieres of works by contemporary composers such as Héctor Marroquin, Hans Stähli, and Sebastian Krämer. Lars Straehler-Pohl currently conducts, among others, the Berlin Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin Doctors' Orchestra, and the Privatoper Berlin.