Born in Berlin, Marcus Merkel studied conducting, composition, piano and singing in Berlin. In his youth, he was also trained as a jazz pianist and singer as well as on the double bass and saxophone. He has won the national composition competition four times and most recently the competition for the festival fanfare at Graz University of Technology. He attended courses with Gianluigi Gelmetti, among others, and was a guest student with Christian Thielemann in Bayreuth. Marcus Merkel founded the Junge Philharmonie Berlin while still a student and has been its artistic director ever since. During this time, he also conducted a festival in Kyoto (Japan), led a conducting workshop for the education department of the Berliner Philharmoniker and stood in for Julien Salemkour in a production of “Le nozze di Figaro” in Rostock. 

From the 2015/16 season, he was initially engaged as a solo repetiteur with conducting duties and later as Kapellmeister at Graz Opera, where he conducted over 40 performances per season, including pieces such as Die Königskinder, Norma, Don Carlo, La Forza del Destino and Der fliegende Holländer. Marcus Merkel conducted rehearsals of premieres such as Die Fledermaus, Candide, Le nozze di Figaro and Les pêcheurs de perles. Highlights during his time in Graz included an Ariadne auf Naxos in Amsterdam, the rehearsal of all Beethoven piano concertos for Rudolf Buchbinder, a Verdi Requiem in Berlin Cathedral, a concertante Fidelio with Sir Bryn Terfel and a semi-staged Tosca with Kristine Opolais, Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tézier. Merkel also founded the Young Concerts Graz, with which he regularly organises concerts by young musicians for young people. To expand his leadership skills, he also completed an MBA on the side. 

Since the 2022/23 season, Marcus Merkel has been Chief Conductor at Koblenz Theatre, where he already introduced himself with a new Parsifal in April 2022. In his first year as chief conductor, he made his debut with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and rehearsed the premieres of Freischütz, La Traviata and Nixon in China in Koblenz. In summer 2023, he celebrated a great success in Graz with Carmen with Elina Garanča, Ramón Vargas and Erwin Schrott. In the 2023/24 season, he is rehearsing La clemenza di Tito, Hänsel und Gretel and Ariadne auf Naxos in Koblenz. Guest engagements take him to the Staatstheater Darmstadt for a symphony concert, to the Berlin Cathedral for a Verdi Requiem and to Graz for a concert version of the Ring des Nibelungen with Klaus Florian Vogt and Michael Volle. In 2024/25, he will return to Antwerp for a symphony concert and make his debut at the Semperoper Dresden with a series of performances of “Die Fledermaus”. 

Conducts the concerts on 24 and 25 August 2024