Markus Stenz held the titles of General Music Director of the City of Cologne and Gürzenich-Kapellmeister from 2003 until 2014; he is also Principal Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Hallé Orchestra. He has been Artistic Director of the Montepulciano Festival, Principal Conductor of London Sinfonietta and Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which he conducted on their triumphant first European tour in 2000. In 2008 he visited China with the Gürzenich Orchestra and conducted their first ever BBC Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. He returned to China in 2010 with Cologne Opera for two complete cycles of Wagner’s Ring in Shanghai and Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Beijing.

He made his debut as an opera conductor in 1988 at La Fenice in Venice in the first performance of Hans Werner Henze’s revised version of Elegy for Young Lovers. He has since conducted many premieres. He has appeared at the world’s major opera houses and international festivals, including La Scala in Milan, La Monnaie in Brussels, English National Opera, San Francisco Opera, Stuttgart Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Edinburgh International Festival and the Salzburg Festival.

Markus Stenz’s notable performances in Cologne have included Wagner’s Ring, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser as well as Janáček’s Jenůfa and Kátya Kabanová. In 2009 he made his successful debut at Chicago Lyric Opera in a production of Kátya Kabanová featuring Karita Mattila, and at the same time resumed his long-standing relationship with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Mahler’s Symphony No 4. Other leading orchestras which Markus Stenz conducts include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Berlin Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich, Vienna Symphony and the symphony orchestras of the Hessische Rundfunk, WDR and NDR.

Markus Stenz studied at the School of Music in Cologne under Volker Wangenheim and at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. He has been awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Northern College of Music.