Markand Thakar

Markand Thakar is Music Director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and Co-Director of Graduate Conducting at the Peabody Conservatory. A former assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Maestro Thakar’s appearances include concerts with some 40 orchestras across North America. The BCO has performed a five-concert tour of China and has recorded for Naxos, including an album of music by Jonathan Leshnoff named to Naxos’s “Best of the Best” list. In his 12-year tenure as Music Director of the Duluth Superior Symphony, the DSSO saw such dramatic growth in both audience and artistic prominence that Minnesota Public Radio called it “Minnesota’s other great orchestra.” Maestro Thakar was a frequent guest conductor at the Aspen Music Festival. He has appeared with major soloists including Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, and is a winner of the Geraldine C. and Emory M. Ford Foundation Award. 

Noted internationally as a pedagogue, his two annual conducting programs with the BCO draw conductors from around the world. Since 1996 he has been co-director of graduate conducting at the Peabody Conservatory, with Gustav Meier and subsequently with Marin Alsop; his Peabody students have won significant conducting positions across North America and internationally. Thakar is a protégé of the legendary Sergiu Celibidache and a former Fulbright Fellow with degrees from The Juilliard School, Columbia University, and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory, with additional studies at the Curtis Institute and the Ciprian Porumbescu Conservatory in Bucharest, Romania. Other conducting studies were with Gustav Meier, Max Rudolf, and Peter Perret. 

Markand Thakar is the author of three seminal books. Counterpoint: Fundamentals of Music Making (also issued in Italian and Czech) uses species counterpoint to promote an understanding of how both composer and performer contribute to the experience of musical beauty. Looking for the “Harp” Quartet; An Investigation into Musical Beauty is a study of musical beauty from the standpoint of the composer, performer, and listener. And On the Principles and Practice of Conducting is a manual for conductors at all levels.

For more information: markandthakar.com