Brazilian-born Marcelo Lehninger has been Music Director of the Grand Rapids Symphony since 2016, and in 2018, he brought the Symphony to Carnegie Hall for its first performance at the famed venue in thirteen years. He was recently appointed Artistic Director of the Bellingham Festival of Music in Washington. Previously, he was Music Director of the New West Symphony in Los Angeles, for which the League of American Orchestras awarded him the Helen H. Thompson Award for Emerging Music Directors. For five years, Lehninger was Assistant and then Associate Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a tenure that included many concerts in Boston, Tanglewood and a highly praised debut at Carnegie Hall in 2011.
In the 2024-2025 season, Lehninger leads ten programs with the Grand Rapids Symphony, conducting a new orchestration of a work by Clara Schumann; Jake Heggie’s Earth 2.0, a Grand Rapids Symphony co-commission; a program of South American music; a Gala concert with Yo‑Yo Ma; and major works by Mahler, Dvořák, Mussorgsky, Strauss and others. Also this season, Lehninger returns to the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo in Brazil and makes his debut appearances in South Africa with the Johannesburg and Kwa Zulu Natal Philharmonics. He also returns to the Springfield (Massachusetts) Symphony Orchestra and Tulsa Symphony. In summer of 2024, Lehninger inaugurates his new annual Conducting Institute, which offers a one-month residency to promising young conductors as part of the Bellingham Festival of Music.
As a guest conductor, Lehninger has led many of the top orchestras in the United States, including the Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Houston, Detroit, Baltimore, Seattle, National, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Colorado, New Jersey and Portland, Symphonies; the Louisville and Sarasota Orchestras; and the Rochester and Buffalo Philharmonics.
European highlights include engagements with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Lucerne Symphony, Prague Philharmonia, Budapest’s MAV Symphony, regular visits to the Slovenian Philharmonic, including on tour to Vienna’s Konzerthaus, and a tour with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra assisting Mariss Jansons. He made his Australian debut with the Sydney and Melbourne Symphonies with his friend and mentor Nelson Freire as soloist. In Japan, he conducted the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Tokyo and the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra in Fukuoka.
Lehninger was Music Advisor of The Orchestra of the Americas for the 2007-2008 season. In summer of 2008, he toured with the orchestra in South America, conducting concerts in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. He has led all of the top orchestras in Brazil, and served as Associate Conductor of the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra, where he returns regularly as guest conductor. He appears regularly at the Festival de Campos do Jordão in Brazil.
Chosen by Kurt Masur in 2008, Lehninger was awarded the First Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Scholarship sponsored by the American Friends of the Mendelssohn Foundation. He was Maestro Masur’s assistant with the Orchestre National de France (during their residency at the Musikverein in Vienna), Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, and the New York Philharmonic.
Before dedicating his career to conducting, Lehninger studied violin and piano. He holds a Master's degree from the Conductors Institute at New York's Bard College, where he studied conducting under Harold Farberman and composition with Laurence Wallach. His mentors also include Kurt Masur, Mariss Jansons, Leonard Slatkin, and Roberto Tibiriçá. A dual citizen of Brazil and Germany, Marcelo Lehninger is the son of Brazilian pianist Sônia Goulart and German violinist Erich Lehninger.
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