With a warmth to his playing that outwardly reflects his engaging personality, Weiss has dazzled audiences with his passionate, lush sound and performed with dozens of orchestras in North America including the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic.

In March 2022, Orion released a new album, Arc I: Granados, Janáček, Scriabin, on First Hand Records. Arc I is the inaugural album of an ambitious three-part series and features important works for solo piano from the frantic years of 1911-1913, the precipice before World War I. The three musical stories on Arc I - Granados' Goyescas, Janáček's In the Mists, and Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 9, "Black Mass" - each struggle with the same impossible awareness of what was coming for the world, and in doing so, plunge further into modernity and despair.

Of his Arc album series, Orion Weiss explains, "The arc of this recital trilogy is inverted, like a rainbow's reflection in water. Arc I's first steps head downhill, beginning from hope and proceeding to despair. The bottom of the journey, Arc II, is Earth's center, grief, loss, the lowest we can reach. The return trip, Arc III, is one of excitement and renewal, filled with the joy of rebirth and anticipation of a better future."

Also known for his affinity and enthusiasm for chamber music, Weiss performs regularly with violinists Augustin Hadelich, William Hagen, Benjamin Beilman, James Ehnes, and Arnaud Sussman; pianist Shai Wosner; cellist Julie Albers; and the Ariel, Parker, and Pacifica Quartets.

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 included 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. 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. 

Learn more www.orionweiss.com.

August 2024 - Please do not edit without permission.