

Armenian State Symphony Orchestra
Gergely Madaras is Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège since 2019. He has previously held positions as Chief Conductor of the Savaria Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Orchestre Dijon Bourgogne.
Having forged strong professional relationships throughout Europe, Gergely regularly appears as a guest conductor with orchestras including the BBC Symphony, Hallé, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Maggio Muiscale Fiorentino, the Netherlands, Oslo and Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestras as well as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Academy of Ancient Music. Further afield, he has appeared with the Melbourne and Houston Symphony orchestras.
Gergely maintains a close relationship with new music and has collaborated with composers George Benjamin, Péter Eötvös, György Kurtág, Tristan Murail, Luca Francesconi, Philippe Boesmans and Pierre Boulez, for whom he served as assistant conductor at the Lucerne Festival Academy between 2011-2013.
Equally established in the operatic repertoire, he has appeared at the English National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Hungarian State Opera and Grand Théâtre de Genève. Future plans include his debut at La Monnaie in Brussels.
Born in Budapest in 1984, Gergely first began studying folk music with the last generation of authentic Hungarian Gipsy and peasant musicians at the age of five. He then went on to study classical flute, violin and composition, graduating from the flute faculty of the Liszt Academy in Budapest, as well as the conducting faculty of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he studied with Mark Stringer.
Praised for his “burnished tone, spellbinding technique, and probing musical mind” (Boston Classical Review), cellist Brannon Cho has emerged as an outstanding artist of his generation. He is the First Prize winner of the prestigious 6th International Paulo Cello Competition, and is also a prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth, Naumburg, and Cassadó International Cello Competitions.
Most recently, Brannon Cho is the recipient of the 2020 Janos Starker Foundation Award, the Landgraf von Hessen Prize from Kronberg Academy, the 2019 Ivan Galamian Award previously held by James Ehnes, and is a scholarship holder in the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation. Brannon Cho has appeared as a soloist with many of the top orchestras around the world, including the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, and Brussels Philharmonic under world renowned conductors such as Susanna Mälkki, Stéphane Denève, and Hugh Wolff.
As a lover of chamber music, Brannon Cho has shared the stage with artists such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Christian Tetzlaff, Gidon Kremer, and Joshua Bell. His recent festival appearances include Rheingau, Marlboro, Kronberg Academy, Music@Menlo, and Prussia Cove. Brannon Cho’s recent and upcoming solo performance highlights include debuts in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Cello Biënnale Amsterdam, Kumho Art Hall in Seoul, Rheingau Musik Festival with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Konzerthaus Berlin, and Seoul Arts Center.
Born in New Jersey, Brannon Cho received his Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music under Hans Jørgen Jensen. He was awarded the prestigious Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Laurence Lesser. Today, he is in the Professional Studies program at the Kronberg Academy, under the tutelage of Frans Helmerson. Brannon Cho is sponsored by Thomastik-Infeld, and performs on a rare cello made by Antonio Casini in 1668 in Modena, Italy.
Noemi Gyori graduated with honours from the Liszt Academy of Music and completed postgraduate studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, studying with Henrik Prőhle, Barbara Gisler-Haase and András Adorján. She is the first flautist to hold a PhD in Flute Performance from the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Noemi has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in 28 countries, and is a recipient of the European Culture Prize for Young Artists (2011), the Career Prize of the Salon de Virtuosi Foundation New York (2012) and the Performers’ Prize of the Artisjus Music Foundation Hungary (2006, 2009). She is the principal flutist of the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich and is an Associate Tutor in flute at The Royal Northern College of Music, Tutor at the Junior RNCM and at The University of Manchester. She has given masterclasses in three continents and has recorded for broadcast with the ORF, Deutschlandfunk, BRF, BBC, WQXR New York, Hungarian Radio, Arte and Mezzo TV. Her albums – Antonio Nava: Flute and Guitar Duos (2011), Glowing Sonorities (2016), Transforming Traditions (2019), Haydn and Mozart Quartets (2020) – received international critical acclaim.
Emerging from a group of devotees and enthusiasts of classical music, the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra was created by Sergey Smbatyan, the present Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the orchestra. From the very onset of its existence, the orchestra has been home to bright and energetic musicians, assembled around the shared vision of amplifying the cultural awareness in Armenia and elevating the spiritual excellence of human nature by the power of classical music. The orchestra performs over 50 concerts annually, with a rich and multifarious repertoire covering multiple music genres and performance formats.
It has been profiled a multitude of times with such world-class composers as Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir Karl Jenkins, Giya Kancheli and Tigran Mansuryan as well as a number of highly distinguished performing artists. The Armenian State Symphony Orchestra has a history of close relationships with world-scale artists such as Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Spivakov, Maxim Vengerov, Denis Matsuev, Vadim Repin, Vag Papian, Boris Berezovsky, Zakhar Bron and others.
The Armenian State Symphony Orchestra has been hosted by many reputable concert halls around the world, including Opera Garnier (Paris), Konzerthaus (Berlin), Dr. Anton Philipszaal (Hague), Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and the Great Hall of Conservatory (Moscow), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), Royal Theatre (Madrid), Dubai Opera House and others.
A remarkable chapter in the history of the orchestra was the 2020 European Tour with the renowned violin virtuoso and the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra’s Artist-in-Residence Maxim Vengerov, with brilliant performances hosted on famous stages around Europe - Berliner Philharmonie, Vienna's Musikverein, London's Barbican Center, Prague's Dvorak Hall, Salzburg's Grosses Festspielhaus and Moscow's Zaryadye Concert Hall.
Aside from the extensive concert activity in Armenia and overseas, the orchestra also enjoys recognition and is highly esteemed for its increasing role in educating young people in Armenia. Since 2018, in the framework of DasA educational-cultural project the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra and Sergey Smbatyan have been sparking interest and liking for classical music in high-school students across Armenia, with an attempt to galvanize a larger movement for cultivating noble insights and taste for classical music among the young generation.
A number of orchestra’s concerts have been broadcast by Medici.tv, EuroNews, and Classic.fm. In 2019, a documentary was released by Mezzo TV, featuring Sergey Smbatyan and the history of the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra.