Markus Rindt
Artistic Director
Markus Rindt is Artistic Director of the Dresdner Sinfoniker. He hails from a musical family – his mother was a choir singer, his father an orchestra musician. He received his first piano lessons at the age of six. After attending the Dresden Spezialschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber, he studied horn with Prof. Peter Damm in Dresden and with Prof. Erich Penzel in Cologne. His first engagement as a solo hornist led him to the Landesbühnen Sachsen. During this period, he was also deeply committed to other musical genres. In 1993 he founded the fusion band Marquis in Cologne as keyboarder and pianist, for which he also composed.
In 1996 Rindt founded the Dresdner Sinfoniker with musician and composer Sven Helbig. In the following years he shifted his focus more and more from active music making and composing to the organisation of the internationally acclaimed orchestra. As Spiritus Rector, Rindt has now been a driving force behind spectacular projects with which the orchestra often attracts worldwide attention for more than two decades. These include the Hochhaussinfonie, the First Remote Conducting of the World, the Concert at the End of Time, aghet – ağıt on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide or TEAR DOWN THIS WALL! on the border between Mexico and the USA. The desire to overcome borders – both physical and ideological – finds its origin in Rindt’s personal history: in October 1989 he fled the GDR via the German Embassy in Prague.
Rindt was awarded the Art Promotion Prize of the City of Dresden in 2000, the ‘Cultural Manager of the Year’ Award in 2008 and the ‘Dresdner of the Decade’ Award in 2010. In 2018 he was awarded the Erich Kästner Prize for “his multifaceted commitment against nationalism, fanaticism and isolation as well as his efforts for a better understanding between peoples”. Previous recipients of the prize include Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Marion Countess Dönhoff, Joachim Gauck and Richard von Weizsäcker.
