Conductor Bio

Jun Märkl became the eighth Music Director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in September 2024, having previously acted as the ISO’s Artistic Advisor from 2021–2024. This new appointment celebrates the culmination of Mr. Märkl’s nearly 25-year-long collaboration with the ISO. Märkl currently serves as Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, as Principal Guest Conductor of the Oregon Symphony, and was recently named Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague beginning with the 2025–26 season.   

Maestro Märkl is a highly respected interpreter of both symphonic and operatic Germanic repertoire, and for his idiomatic explorations of the French impressionists. His long-standing relationships with the great opera houses and orchestras of Europe have been highlighted by his leadership as General Music Director of the National Theater Mannheim (1994–2000), and as Music Director of the Orchestre National de Lyon (2005–11), the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig (2007–2012) and the Basque National Orchestra (2014–17). He has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Munich Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Orchestre de Paris in Europe, the Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Montreal Symphony in North America, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, and the Sydney Symphony and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Australia among many others.  

Maestro Märkl was a regular guest at the state operas of Vienna, Munich, Berlin, and the Semperoper Dresden, and was permanent conductor of the Bavarian State Opera until 2006. He made his Royal Opera House London Covent Garden debut with Götterdämmerung in 1996 and with Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera of New York in 1998. He conducted complete Ring cycles at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and at the New National Theatre in Tokyo 2001-2004, and toured Japan with the Semperoper Dresden and the Wiener Staatsoper. Maestro Märkl has an extensive discography—among more than 50 CDs, he has recorded the complete Schumann symphonies with the NHK Symphony, Mendelssohn and Wagner with the MDR Leipzig Symphony; as well as Ravel, Messiaen and a nine-CD recording of Debussy with the Orchestre National de Lyon which led to the honor of the “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” being bestowed upon him by the French Ministry of Culture in 2012. Märkl has more recently recorded 3 CDs with works of Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa and 4 CDs of rare works by Saint-Säens in a project that will continue in the coming years.    

Born in Munich, Märkl’s father was a distinguished concertmaster and his mother a solo pianist. Jun Märkl studied at the Musikhochschule in Hannover, with Sergiu Celibidache in Munich and Gustav Meier in Michigan. In 1986, he won the conducting competition of the Deutsche Musikrat and a year later won a scholarship from the Boston Symphony Orchestra to study at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. Fully dedicated to working with young musicians he has acted as Principal Conductor at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, he teaches as a Guest Professor at the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, and is a regular guest conductor at the Aspen Music Festival, Colorado.