Program
James Ehnes, violin
Orion Weiss, piano
Program to be announced soon!
James Ehnes
James Ehnes has established himself as one of the most sought-after musicians on the international stage. Gifted with a rare combination of stunning virtuosity, serene lyricism and an unfaltering musicality, Ehnes is a favourite guest at the world’s most celebrated concert halls.
Recent and upcoming orchestral highlights include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Cleveland Orchestra.
A devoted chamber musician, Ehnes is the Artistic Director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society and the leader of the Ehnes Quartet. As a recitalist, he performs regularly at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Center Chicago, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Verbier Festival, Dresden Music Festival and Festival de Pâques in Aix.
During the 25/26 season, Ehnes will embark on his 50th birthday recital tour in his native Canada, with performances in every province and territory.
Ehnes has an extensive discography and has won many awards for his recordings, including two Grammys, three Gramophone Awards and twelve Juno Awards, the most of any classical musician in history. In 2021, Ehnes was announced as the recipient of the coveted Artist of the Year award at the 2021 Gramophone Awards which celebrated his recent contributions to the recording industry, including the launch of a new online recital series entitled ‘Recitals from Home’ which was released in June 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent closure of concert halls. Ehnes recorded the six Bach Sonatas and Partitas and six Sonatas of Ysaÿe from his home with state-of-the-art recording equipment and released six episodes over the period of two months. These recordings have been met with great critical acclaim by audiences worldwide and Ehnes was described by Le Devoir as being "at the absolute forefront of the streaming evolution".
Ehnes began violin studies at the age of five, became a protégé of the noted Canadian violinist Francis Chaplin aged nine, and made his orchestra debut with L’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal aged 13. He continued his studies with Sally Thomas at the Meadowmount School of Music and The Juilliard School, winning the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music upon his graduation in 1997. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Manitoba, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, where he is a Visiting Professor. Since 2024, he has been Professor of Violin at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
Ehnes plays the “Marsick” Stradivarius of 1715.
Orion Weiss
One of the most sought-after soloists and chamber music collaborators of his generation, Orion Weiss is widely regarded as a “brilliant pianist” (The New York Times) with “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post). With a warmth to his playing that outwardly reflects his engaging personality, Weiss’s “delicate, even fingerwork” (Washington Classical Review) and “head-spinning range of colors” (Chicago Tribune) have dazzled audiences around the world. He has performed with all of the major orchestras of North America, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic.
In February of 2025, Weiss released Arc III, the final album in his recital trilogy, on First Hand Records. Weiss’s 24-25 performance schedule includes engagements with violinist James Ehnes, who joins Weiss for a return to London’s Wigmore Hall and for performances of the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas in Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Seattle. Among numerous engagements with U.S. orchestras, Weiss makes his David Geffen Hall debut in New York with the American Symphony Orchestra. He performs Bach's Goldberg Variations at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Newport Classical in Rhode Island, among other recitals. He is featured in performances at Italy’s Teatro Marrucino Biglietteria and in the Great Artists Series at Washington University in St. Louis, on a tour with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at LaMusica Chamber Music Festival in Sarasota, Florida. Weiss also tours Japan, playing the complete Brahms Violin Sonatas with Akiko Suwanai and performs the complete Grieg Sonatas with James Ehnes in Bergen, Norway. Over the last year, Weiss made his return to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, led by Michael Tilson Thomas, and debuted with the National Symphony Orchestra, led by Ken-David Masur. He also toured the United States and Asia with violinist Augustin Hadelich and performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.
Known for his affinity for chamber music, Weiss performs regularly with Augustin Hadelich, as well as fellow violinists William Hagen and James Ehnes; pianists Michael Brown and Shai Wosner; and the Ariel, Parker, and Pacifica Quartets. As a recitalist and chamber musician, Weiss has appeared at venues and festivals including the Ravinia Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Mariinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg), the Edinburgh International Festival, the Schubert Club, Hong Kong Premiere Performances, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Denver Friends of Chamber Music, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center’s Fortas Series, the 92nd Street Y, and at summer music festivals including Bard, Santa Fe, Bridgehampton, Bravo! Vail, Sunriver, and Grand Teton, among many others.
Other highlights from Weiss’s recent seasons include a live-stream with the Minnesota Orchestra; a performance of Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the release of his recording of Christopher Rouse’s Seeing, the first two installments of his critically acclaimed Arc recital trilogy; a recording of Korngold’s Left Hand concerto and other works with Leon Botstein and TON; and recordings of Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and JoAnn Falletta.
Weiss can be heard on the Naxos, Telos, Bridge, First Hand, Yarlung, and Artek labels on recordings such as The Piano Protagonists with The Orchestra Now, led by Leon Botstein; a disc of Scarlatti Sonatas for Naxos; a solo recital disc of Bartók, Dvorák, and Prokofiev; Brahms Sonatas with violinist Arnaud Sussmann; a solo recital album of J.S. Bach, Scriabin, Mozart, and Carter; and a recital disc with cellist Julie Albers. In March 2022, First Hand Records released the first album of Weiss’s Arc Trilogy – Arc I: Granados, Janáček, Scriabin – a recording exploring the omens and tension of the period preceding World War I. Gramophone Magazine praised the album as “expansive, colorful, and texturally varied.” Arc II, featuring the music of Ravel, Brahms, and Shostakovich, was released in November 2022. Arc III, featuring works by Brahms, Schubert, Debussy, Dohnányi, Ligeti, and Talma, was released in February 2025 and called a “a worthy successor to the distinguished predecessors” by Gramophone. Over recent years, Weiss has also raised his profile through video, assembling a broad and growing YouTube videography that includes Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the Op. 39 Rachmaninoff etudes, and Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, among many others.
In the summer of 2011, Weiss made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood as a last-minute replacement for Leon Fleisher. In recent seasons, he has also performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and in summer concerts with the New York Philharmonic at both Lincoln Center and the Bravo! Vail Valley Festival. In 2005, he toured Israel with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Itzhak Perlman.
Weiss’s list of awards includes the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year, Gilmore Young Artist Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Gina Bachauer Scholarship at The Juilliard School, and the Mieczyslaw Munz Scholarship. He won the 2005 William Petschek Recital Award at Juilliard and made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall that April. Also in 2005, Weiss made his European debut in a recital at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. From 2002-2004, he was a member of Lincoln Center’s The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). A native of Lyndhurst, Ohio, Weiss attended the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Young Artist Program through high school, where he studied with Paul Schenly, Daniel Shapiro, and Sergei Babayan. His other teachers include Joseph Kalichstein, Jerome Lowenthal, Kathryn Brown, and Edith Reed. In February 1999, Weiss made his Cleveland Orchestra debut performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The next month, with less than 24 hours notice, Weiss stepped in to replace André Watts for a performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and was immediately invited to return for a performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto that October. In 2004, he graduated from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Emanuel Ax.