Cristian Măcelaru

Cristian Măcelaru was born in Timisoara, Romania, the youngest of 10 children in a musical family. He began studying violin at age five, learning to read and write music before the alphabet, and soon was performing in an amateur orchestra conducted by his father.

At 17, Măcelaru moved to the United States to study violin at Michigan’s Interlochen Arts Academy, where he discovered a passion for conducting. He continued his studies at the University of Miami in Florida and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston. Măcelaru was the youngest concertmaster in the history of the Miami Symphony Orchestra and made his Carnegie Hall debut with the ensemble at just 19.

Now an internationally acclaimed conductor, Măcelaru is the music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de France. He also serves as artistic director of the George Enescu International Festival and Competition and artistic director and principal conductor of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He has appeared with leading orchestras worldwide, and in 2020 he won a Grammy for conducting the Decca Classics recording of Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto with Nicola Benedetti and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“The greatest art comes at the intersection of the biggest diversity,” he told Cincinnati Magazine. “If you want to achieve an incredible artistic experience, you have to search deeply to discover the individual cultural identities that all of us bring. That requires embracing who we all are individually.”

Photo by R. R. Jones. Published June 2026