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Manfred Honeck has firmly established himself as one of the world’s leading conductors, whose distinctive and revelatory interpretations receive great international acclaim. As Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where his contract runs through the 2027-2028 season, he has entered his 17th season. Celebrated at home and abroad, he and the orchestra continue to serve as cultural ambassadors for the city of Pittsburgh. Guest appearances include Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, as well as the major venues of Europe and leading festivals such as the BBC Proms, Salzburg Festival, Musikfest Berlin, Lucerne Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, Beethovenfest Bonn, and Grafenegg Festival. In summer 2024, he leads the Pittsburgh Symphony in a nine-city European Festivals Tour, starting with their appearance as the only American orchestra at the prestigious Salzburg Festival and concluding at Vienna Konzerthaus.

Manfred Honeck's successful work in Pittsburgh is being extensively documented by recordings on the Reference Recordings label, featuring works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and others. They have received a multitude of outstanding reviews and awards, including many GRAMMY® nominations, and he and the orchestra won the GRAMMY® for "Best Orchestral Performance" in 2018. The most recent recording, Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, paired with Resurrexit by Mason Bates, was released in July 2024 to great critical acclaim.

Born in Austria, Manfred Honeck completed his musical training at the University of Music in Vienna. His many years of experience as a member of the viola section in the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Orchestra have had a lasting influence on his work as a conductor, and his art of interpretation is based on his determination to venture deep beneath the surface of the music. He began his conducting career as assistant to Claudio Abbado and as director of the Vienna Jeunesse Orchestra. Subsequently, he was engaged by the Zurich Opera House, where he was awarded the European Conducting Prize in 1993. He has since served as one of three principal conductors of the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, as Music Director of the Norwegian National Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm. In November 2023, he was appointed Honorary Conductor by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, following decades of close collaboration.

Manfred Honeck also has a strong profile as opera conductor. In his four seasons as General Music Director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, he conducted premieres of operas by Berlioz, Mozart, Poulenc, Strauss, Verdi, and Wagner. He has also appeared as guest at leading houses such as Semperoper Dresden, Komische Oper Berlin, Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, Royal Opera of Copenhagen, and the Salzburg Festival. In 2020, Beethoven’s anniversary year, he conducted a new staging of Fidelio (1806 version) at the Theater an der Wien. In autumn 2022, he made his much-acclaimed debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a revival of Mozart’s Idomeneo. Beyond the podium, Manfred Honeck has designed a series of symphonic suites, including Janáček’s Jenůfa, Strauss’s Elektra, Dvořák’s Rusalka as well as Puccini's Turandot which he regularly performs around the globe. The most recent arrangement, of Strauss’s Salome, was premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2023.

As a guest conductor, Manfred Honeck has worked with all leading international orchestras, including Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome and the Vienna Philharmonic. In the United States, he has conducted all major US orchestras, including New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. He has also been Artistic Director of the International Concerts Wolfegg in Germany for thirty years.

In 2024-2025, Manfred Honeck will conduct fourteen wide-ranging programs and several special projects in Pittsburgh, including all four of the season's world premieres and commissions. He also will return to the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, amongst others. In Bruckner's anniversary year of 2024, he will continue to place a special focus on the music of this composer.

Manfred Honeck holds honorary doctorates from several universities in the United States and was awarded the honorary title of Professor by the Austrian Federal President. In 2018, the jury of the International Classical Music Awards declared him "Artist of the Year".

One of classical music’s most creative minds, in the 2023-24 season Alice Sara Ott appears as Artist in Residence at London’s Southbank Centre and Paris’s Radio France; gives the worldwide premieres of a new piano concerto composed for her by Bryce Dessner; embarks upon an extensive Asia tour with her project Echoes Of Life; and releases two major new albums on Deutsche Grammophon, for whom she is an exclusive recording artist.  

2023-24 also sees Alice Sara Ott on tour with London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Antonio Pappano, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Kazuki Yamada. She makes her debut with New York Philharmonic performing Ravel’s G Major concerto with Karina Canellakis conducting. Ott also premieres Bryce Dessner’s piano concerto with Tonhalle Zurich Orchestra with Kent Nagano, before going on to perform it with the likes of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic and Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin.  

Two major album releases this season include Beethoven and Echoes Of Life Deluxe, a follow-up to Echoes Of Life, Ott’s widely successful tenth album on Deutsche Grammophon. The Beethoven project - with Karina Canellakis and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra - was born as a collaboration with Apple Music, with the album released exclusively upon launch of the new Apple Music Classical app. Ott was the face of Apple Music’s global advertising, starring and performing in the multi-platform video campaign.  

In 2023-24 Ott will take Echoes Of Life on an extensive Asia tour taking in China, Hong Kong and Japan. Echoes Of Life, built around Chopin’s preludes op.28 and featuring works from the likes of Chilly Gonzales, Francesco Tristano, Arvo Pärt and György Ligeti - is, in its live incarnation, an affecting and original collaboration with architect Hakan Demirel. A digital video installation accompanying the recital takes the audience on their own virtual journey to create a unique concert experience.  

Alice Sara Ott has worked with conductors at the highest-level including Gustavo Dudamel, Pablo Heras-Casado, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Edward Gardner, Paavo Järvi, Sir Antonio Pappano, Gianandrea Noseda, Andrés Orozco- Estrada, Francois Leleux, Yuri Temirkanov, Lorin Maazel, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sakari Oramo, Osmo Vänskä, Myung-Whun Chung and Robin Ticciati. She continues to perform with ensembles such as Berliner Philharmoniker, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony, Camerata Salzburg, Münchner Philharmoniker, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra, and Wiener Symphoniker.  

Beethoven and Echoes Of Life Deluxe follow on from seminal albums such as Nightfall, Wonderland and The Chopin Project, taking her total number of album streams to over 370 million. Also a talented illustrator and designer, Alice Sara Ott created a signature line of bags for JOST, one of Germany’s premium fashion brands. As well as her collaboration with Apple Music, she has also been global brand ambassador for Technics, collaborated with French luxury jewelry house, Chaumet, part of the LVMH group, and with German luxury jewelry brand Wempe. 

Armenian Soprano Lilit Davtyan is a graduate of the Yerevan State Conservatory. In 2016, she was admitted to the piano department of the Conservatory while continuing to attend vocal courses, receiving her Bachelor’s degree in 2020 followed by a Master’s degree in 2022. From 2018 to 2021, she worked as an accompanist, simultaneously performing as a singer at the Yerevan State Conservatory's Opera Studio.

In September 2021, she joined the Young Opera Artists Program of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow where she has since been studying vocal with the Artistic Director of the Program, Dmitry Vdovin. In addition, she has taken part in Master classes with Malcolm Martineau, Sergei Leiferkus, Ildar Abdrazakov, Evamaria Wieser, Semion Skigin, Alessandro Amoretti, Giulio Zappa, Mzia Bakhtouridze and many others. 

Alongside studying and working, Lilit has successfully participated in many competitions, with prizes including First Prize in the XII International Competition-Festival of Young Performers, Russia in 2016, the first prize at the Concorso Internazionale Musicale Città di Pesaro in 2019, the second prize and the special prize at the José Carreras Grand Prix of the Elena Obraztsova Foundation in Moscow in 2021, and the special prize for interpretation of Rachmaninoff songs at the International Rachmaninoff Competition in Moscow in 2022. She was also a 2022 finalist in the internationally renowned Neue Stimmen singing competition. 

Recent highlights include participating in the Salzburg Festspiele’s Young Singers Project for their 2023 season. With them, she performed the roles Der Lehnstuhl, Die Prinzessin and Die Fledermaus in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortileges, as well as taking part as a soloist in the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award, performing under the baton of the first prize winner, Hankyeol Yoon. 

Lilit is currently part of the Deutsche Oper Berlin ensemble. With them, season highlights include Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Corinna in Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, Lauretta and Suor Genovieffa in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Suor Angelica, Marzellina in Beethoven’s Fidelio, Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni,  Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, and Hirt in Wagner’s Tannhäuser.