Around the Music Festival

The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra has announced that it will welcome Jun Märkl as music director. The fifth generation “chef” succeeds the Brazilian conductor Fabio Mechetti. The term is from the 2021/2022 season. From the 2021/2022 season, he will be appointed as an art advisor to the Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra.

The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1997. Inviting Kees Bakels as the first principal conductor, he performed in 1998 with a multinational orchestra that gathered 105 members from 25 countries. The headquarters is the Petronas Philharmonic Hall in the Petronas Twin Towers, a landmark in the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Märkl was born in Munich and is 61 years old. Having a German father and a Japanese mother, he studied violin, piano and conducting at the Hannover Conservatory, and then studied under Sergiu Celibidache. He also studied under Seiji Ozawa. In 1991, he became the music director of the Saarland State Theater at a young age and became a hot topic (-1994).

After that, he was the music director and chief conductor of the Mannheim National Theater (1994-2000), Lyon National Orchestra (2005-2011), and MDR Symphony Orchestra (2007-2012). He has been in a permanent post since he retired as music director of the Basque National Orchestra of Spain (formerly the Euskadi Orchestra).

Photo：Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra