Lanfranco Marcelletti Jr.

Maestro Lanfranco Marcelletti joins the TTU School of Music faculty as Associate Professor of Music and Director of Orchestral Studies this January 2022. The Brazilian conductor and music pedagogue began his musical studies in Recife, Brazil, at the Conservatório Pernambuco de Música. He continued his piano studies at the Musik Akademie (Zürich), piano and composition at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst (Vienna), and eventually orchestral conducting at Yale University. Notable among his many awards are first prize in both the Conducting Competition of the Chilean Symphony Orchestra, and the Giovani Solisti di Roma Competition, being named Debut Artist Conductor of the Year by the São Paulo Association of Critics of Art, and the Dean's Prize along with the Eleazar de Carvalho Prize awarded by Yale University. Marcelletti was also awarded a special citation for his work promoting music in his native Recife.

One of Brazil's most internationally renowned artists, Marcelletti has rapidly gained recognition for his brilliant musicality and effective leadership both as an orchestral and operatic conductor. A protégé of renowned scholar/maestro Alberto Zedda, Marcelletti appears regularly at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, where he has led productions of Il Viaggio a Reims and Carlo Coccia's Arrighetto. He began his opera career at Glimmerglass Opera, and has also appeared with Opera Tampa, Teatro Real (Madrid), Commonwealth Opera (MA), and Teatro Calderón (Valladolid, Spain). He assisted another famed maestro, Anton Coppola, in the world premiere of Coppola's epic opera Sacco and Vanzetti. Marcelletti has also written a musical theater piece based on Mozart, in collaboration with actress Carmen Bermejo.

His guest conducting activities have taken him throughout North America, South America, and Europe, and he has appeared with the Brazil Symphony Orchestra (Rio de Janeiro), Chilean National Symphony (Santiago), National Theater Orchestra (Brasilia), Orquesta Sinfónica de Xalapa (Mexico), Orchestra del Teatro Communale (Bologna), Galicia Symphony Orchestra (La Coruña) and Eleazar de Carvalho Summer Arts Festival Orchestra (Fortaleza, Brazil).

Previously to Texas Tech, Marcelletti served as Music Director of the Xalapa Symphony Orchestra (2012-2019) and the Aguascalientes Symphonic Orchestra (2020-2021) in Mexico. He has also served as Associate Director for the renowned Accademia Rossiniana at the Rossini Opera Festival, and Musical Director of the social music project Orquestra Criança Cidadã in his native city, Recife. Comfortable on stage as well as in the classroom setting, Marcelletti has held faculty positions at Amherst College, The University of Massachusetts in the US, and Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa – Mexico, where he started the Master's Program in Orchestral Conducting.