Moon Doh
A recipient of the Takaya Urakawa Foundation Grant awarded to promising young musicians, Moon Doh is associate conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, appointed by Music Director Manfred Honeck in 2021. In this role, he has conducted subscription, education, family and movie concerts as well as sold-out performances with artists such as Sting. An active community builder, he has presented Beethoven’s string quartets in various libraries across Pittsburgh, held Discovery and Drinks talks in different breweries, and led children’s concerts in diverse venues including the MuseumLab in collaboration with Mo Willems.
As the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Flora Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, Germany prior to his Pittsburgh appointment, he initiated the orchestra’s first ever live stream concerts that reached an unprecedented number of audiences across the globe over three seasons. He not only led exciting subscription concerts but also worked closely with music pedagogues in order to give young people a chance to learn and experience orchestral music in a meaningful way.
In recent years, Moon has worked with many orchestras across Europe: WDR Funkhausorchester, Duisburger Philharmoniker, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, and Bergische Symphoniker, Dortmunder Philharmoniker in Germany, Romanian Chamber Orchestra in Romania, Malaga Philharmonic Orchestra in Spain, Sinfonietta Cracovia in Poland, and Pleven Philharmonic in Bulgaria to name a few. Moon's latest collaborations in the US include debuts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Symphoria.
Born in South Korea, Moon spent much of his childhood in the Philippines, Russia, and the United States. At the age of nine, he began cello and piano studies in Russia and has since performed with various youth and student orchestras across the globe. As a passionate advocate for young rising artists, he led concerts with the All-State Orchestra of Hessen in Germany. In addition, he was also the conductor of the Under-16 Orchestra of Tonhalle Düsseldorf and regularly coached the Youth Orchestra of Essen.
A staunch believer in empowering others, Moon has actively worked with asylum seekers in Hungary, children in underserved areas of Bangladesh, and inmates in Baltimore as the president of a student organization while completing his B.A. in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins University. He currently sits on the Board of Violence Prevention Network USA, an organization that helps people at risk of radicalization.
Moon studied orchestral conducting at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf in Germany. Prior to his conducting studies, he received a B.A. in music composition from Sahmyook University in South Korea. Moon has participated in renowned music festivals such as Accademia Chigiana in Italy and Bartók Festival in Hungary. His mentors include Manfred Honeck, Rüdiger Bohn, Cristian Măcelaru, Peter Eötvös, and Jorma Panula. IG: @doh.moon