Orion Weiss

As a recitalist and chamber musician, Weiss has appeared at venues and festivals including the Ravinia Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall and David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, the Mariinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg), Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Schubert Club, Hong Kong Premiere Performances, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Denver Friends of Chamber Music, Charlotte Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Newport Classical, 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, Sun Valley, and Grand Teton, among many others. Known for his affinity for chamber music, Weiss performs regularly with violinists James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, and William Hagen; pianists Michael Stephen Brown and Shai Wosner; and the Ariel, Parker, and Pacifica Quartets, among many others.

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, and Arc III, featuring works by Brahms, Schubert, Debussy, Dohnányi, Ligeti, and Talma, was released in February 2025. The final album of the trilogy, Arc III was described as a “a worthy successor to the distinguished predecessors” by Gramophone, a “canvas of delight, painted with crisp articulation and precise timing” by American Record Guide, and “smart, timely programming, dispatched with insight and care” by The Arts Fuse.

Weiss can be heard on the Naxos, Telos, Bridge, First Hand, Warner Classics Yarlung, Cedille 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, Dvořák, 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 violinist Augustin Hadelich, which won the Opus Klassik Best Chamber Music Recording 2025 award. In addition, Weiss has released a recording of Christopher Rouse’s Seeing, a recording of Korngold’s Left Hand concerto, 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. 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. Soon to be released recordings include the Korngold Piano Quintet with the Pacifica Quartet and an all-Debussy CD, which includes the complete Études along with the rarely performed La Boîte à joujoux.

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. Learn more: www.orionweiss.com.