Emanuel Ax
plays Beethoven

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize. Emanuel Ax was recently named the 2026 Musical America Artist of the Year.

As Artist in Residence for the 2026/2027 season with Radio France, the season begins with a European tour with performances in Munich, Paris, and Amsterdam. Upon returning to North America, Ax will embark on a series of concerts with The Knights with the final performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. An avid collaborator, Mr. Ax’s season will also include chamber music with long-term musical colleagues and friends, Yo-Yo Ma (in Hartford, Philadelphia, East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Chappel Hill and Winona) and Itzhak Perlman (in Philadelphia, Akron, and Detroit). He will return to North American orchestras in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Lincoln, Irvine, Portland, Seattle, Sarasota, Mobile, and New Albany. In recital he can be heard in Omaha, Palm Beach, New Orleans, Ridgefield, La Jolla, San Francisco, Schenectady, Rochester, and at Carnegie Hall. An extensive European tour will include concerts in London, Oslo, Madrid, Dresden, Prague, Monte Carlo, and Milan. Three years in the making, Joseph Levy’s “All the Music in the World”, a documentary film following Mr. Ax on tour including interviews with his many artistic partners will be premiered at DOC NYC this fall. “Classical Music Happy Hour”, the podcast launched by WQXR NY in 2026 hosted by “Manny” Ax received such acclaim that a new season is in preparation for 2027.

Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).

Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University.

Recipient of the 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 30-year-old American pianist Mackenzie Melemed has emerged as one of the most distinctive musical voices of his generation, admired for his nuanced interpretations, technical finesse, and deep artistic sensibility. Hailed as “an excellent young pianist” by the New York Times, Melemed enjoyed an abundance of early stage experience, with over 500 performances to his name by age 13, undoubtedly one of the most seasoned pianists among his peers. Whether in recital, chamber music, or orchestral settings, his performances are marked by a desire to communicate, to reveal, and to connect—with the score, with fellow musicians, and most of all, with the audience.

Born in Massachusetts, Melemed began piano studies at age four, and soon after was performing weekly for senior citizens. At the age of five, he made a national appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, and by nine, he was headlining a 60-show run at the Tropicana Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey. From nine to thirteen, he was invited annually to perform at the White House during the Holiday Open House celebrations—experiences that proved instrumental in shaping his identity as a performer. This wide-ranging exposure fostered a deep comfort on stage and a natural ease in sharing music.

Melemed’s artistry goes beyond performance, combining music and storytelling into memorable experiences for both newcomers and seasoned listeners. Through thoughtfully curated programs that blend familiar works with rare discoveries, he creates intimate connections with audiences, sharing insights that illuminate the music. His vision extends beyond the concert hall: he aims to spark curiosity for lesser-known composers while inspiring future pianists to explore uncharted repertoire, gradually expanding what we consider essential to the classical canon.

A laureate of the 2021 American Pianists Awards and a laureate of the 1st China International Music Competition, Melemed was the only pianist to receive an 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant—one of the highest honors bestowed upon young American classical musicians; presented by Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Career Grants are awarded to American instrumentalists with the largest prospects for a major solo career. He has performed as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Edmonton Symphony, the Polish Radio Orchestra, and other prominent ensembles, and has appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, as well as at major venues and festivals across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Melemed, a Steinway Artist and a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Robert McDonald and Emanuel Ax (BM, MM, and Artist Diploma), is particularly drawn to music that lies just off the beaten path. Alongside the classical and romantic core repertoire, he has developed a reputation for championing lesser-known works and rarely-performed piano concerti, He views commissioning as vital to the future of the arts, a belief reflected in Israeli American composer Avner Dorman’s recent Piano Concerto No.3, written for Melemed and premiered in Europe and Canada. His upcoming debut album reflects this balance of tradition and innovation, pairing works by composers he feels especially connected to—Bach, Brahms, and Liszt—with new commissions by Sir Stephen Hough (UK), Laura Kaminsky (USA), and Avner Dorman.

In anticipation of the United States’ 250th anniversary, he is currently planning what may well be the largest recital tour of American piano music in recent history, Keys Across America — a project rooted in both personal and artistic conviction.

Since 2020, Melemed has lived in Finland. His success following the 2017 Maj Lind Piano Competition, coupled with his fluency in Finnish from Columbia University language courses, launched his successful performance career with invitations to perform with nearly all of Finland’s orchestras and at major music festivals.

Former teachers include Dean Arvidson, Alexander Korsantia, Olga Rogach and William Smiddy.

photo: Jiyang Chen

Conductor Michael Stern has long been devoted to building and leading highly acclaimed orchestras known not only for their impeccable musicianship and creative programming, but also for collaborative, sustainable cultures that often include a vision of music as service to the community. He is passionate about working with young musicians not only in music making, but also to incorporate the idea of “service” into their experiences as they become the artists and advocates of the future who will take classical music into the 21st century and beyond.

Stern is Music Director of Orchestra Lumos (formerly Stamford Symphony) and the National Repertory Orchestra, a unique fellowship program for aspiring young musicians, and whose alumni populate every major orchestra across the United States. He is Music Director Emeritus of the Kansas City Symphony where he just concluded his 19-year tenure and is Artistic Advisor of Iris Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee.

During Stern’s acclaimed tenure with the Kansas City Symphony, he and the orchestra were recognized for their remarkable artistic ascent, original programming, organizational development, stability, and extraordinary audience growth. The orchestra explored a wide range of repertoire and commissioned a number of new works and partnered with GRAMMY® Award-winning Reference Recordings for a collection of acclaimed recordings that includes commissions by American composers Adam Schoenberg and Jonathan Leshnoff as well as Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and works by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Hindemith, Prokofiev, Bartok and more.

Stern co-founded Iris Orchestra in 2000 and was Founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor until 2021-22, when he had planned to step down from his post. With his departure, staff, community and musicians joined together to reinvent the orchestra as the Iris Collective, devising a new way for a 21st-century organization to offer a spectrum of events, from chamber music and smaller ensemble programs to full orchestral performances, teaming up with a number of creative partners, including Stern who continues his involvement as Artistic Advisor.

North American conducting engagements for Stern have included the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and the National Symphony. He debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1986 in a program titled, “Leonard Bernstein and Three Young America Conductors” and has conducted them several times since. Internationally he has led major orchestras in London, Stockholm, Paris, Helsinki, Budapest, Seoul, Israel, Moscow, Taiwan, and Tokyo. Stern has been Chief Conductor of Germany’s Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon in France, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lille, France.

Stern received his music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and is a 1981 graduate of Harvard University.