Leonard David Wacker (*Jerusalem, 1998) is a young German conductor and third prize winner of the conducting competition of Juventudes Musicales de España.
Highlights of the 2025/26 season include his participation in the Contemporary Conducting Program at the Lucerne Festival, a return invitation to the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra, as well as his operatic debut with Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Opéra Angers-Nantes.
Previous assistantships have taken him to the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Duisburger Philharmoniker, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, and the national youth orchestras of Saxony, Bavaria, Berlin, and Hesse. As a guest conductor, he has led the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra, the German Medical Students’ Orchestra, the Wiesbaden Symphony Orchestra, and the Junges Ensemble Berlin. As part of his training, he also gained experience with various orchestras in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Spain.
Leonard has a particular interest in the music of the 20th century as well as the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. In 2019, he founded Ensemble Anthème, with which he performs cantatas and motets from the Baroque period. In his programming, he is particularly concerned with illuminating historical and stylistic connections between musical works.
Leonard Wacker grew up in Jerusalem, Mexico City, and Berlin. He first studied violin at the Universität der Künste Berlin before beginning conducting studies at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar with Prof. Nicolás Pasquet and Prof. Ekhart Wycik. A semester abroad took him to the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, where he studied with Prof. Ole Kristian Ruud and Rolf Gupta.
He is currently completing his studies at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid, where he studies with Prof. Nicolás Pasquet, Jordi Francés, and Miguel Ángel Cañamero. In parallel, he is pursuing studies in philosophy and musicology at Humboldt University in Berlin.
