Peter Oundjian is a dynamic presence in the conducting world with an international career leading preeminent orchestras in many of the world's major musical centers, from New York and Seattle to Amsterdam and Berlin.

He is currently the music director of the Colorado Symphony, where he served previously as principal conductor. He is also music director of the Colorado Music Festival (CMF), where he has continued to program and conduct concerts that delight audiences with beloved masterpieces alongside music written by living composers. Over the course of his 14-year tenure as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which concluded in 2018, he reinvigorated the orchestra with acclaimed innovative programming, artistic collaborations, extensive audience growth, national and international tours and several outstanding recordings, including Vaughan Williams’ Orchestral Works, which garnered a GRAMMY nomination and a Juno Award. Under his leadership, the Symphony underwent a transformation that significantly strengthened its presence in the world.

From 2012-2018, Oundjian served as music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, where he led the RSNO on several international tours, including North America, China, and a European festival tour with performances at the Bregenz Festival, the Dresden Festival as well as in Innsbruck, Bergamo, Ljubljana, and others. His final appearance with the orchestra as their music director was at the 2018 BBC Proms where he conducted Britten’s epic War Requiem.

Oundjian was principal guest vonductor and artistic advisor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2008 and artistic director of the Caramoor International Music Festival in New York from 1997 to 2007. He was also the music director of the Amsterdam Sinfonietta from 1998-2002. Throughout his conducting career, Oundjian has appeared as guest conductor with the country’s leading orchestras, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and San Francisco Symphonies, among others.

In addition to his conducting duties in Colorado, during the 2024-2025 season Oundjian leads subscription weeks with the Sarasota Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981 and has received honorary doctorates from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

One of the most dazzling American pianists of her generation, Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is one of the most versatile, respected, and best-reviewed pianists of our time. McDermott continues her tenure as artistic director of the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, in Colorado, through 2026, which hosts world-renowned artists and orchestras from around the world. She is also the artistic director of the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival, in Florida.  

Highlights of McDermott’s 2024-25 season include three performances of the Piano Concerto by the 20th-century American composer Amy Cheney Beach with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, with which she makes her subscription debut, and with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (MA); her debut in Galway, Ireland, performing music by Bach, Busoni, and Brahms at a Music for Galway recital; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Paducah Symphony Orchestra (KY); Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Des Moines Symphony, Palm Beach Symphony, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra USA (WA); performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, and on tour in Chicago, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Ashland (OR), and Vienna (VA); a special chamber music program at the New World Symphony, in Miami Beach, that includes Mozart’s Quintet in E-flat major and Olivier Messiaen’s wartime masterwork Quartet for the End of Time; performances as a member of the SPA Trio—with soprano Susanna Phillips and violist Paul Neubauer—at the Rockefeller University (New York City), and at Arizona Friends of Chamber Music (Tucson); and a chamber music program at the McKnight Center for the Performing Arts, in Stillwater (OK).  

McDermott’s 2023-24 season included performances with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, both resulting in immediate re-engagements. She also performed Mozart with the New York Philharmonic at the McKnight Center in Stillwater. Recent international highlights include recitals in France at the famed Piano aux Jacobins, in Toulouse; performances with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra at the Cartagena International Music Festival; and an all-Haydn recital tour of China.   

The breadth of McDermott’s repertoire ranges from Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Scriabin, also including works by today’s most influential composers. A recording artist, McDermott is currently recording the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Mexico City’s illustrious Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, under conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto. She has also recorded the complete piano sonatas of Prokofiev, solo works by Chopin, Bach’s English Suites and Partitas (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine), and Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (also Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine). In 2013 she released an album of Mozart concertos with the Calder Quartet that was praised as “exceptional on every count” by Gramophone Magazine. She has recorded five Haydn piano sonatas and two Haydn concertos with the Odense Philharmonic, in Denmark, including two cadenzas written by the late American composer Charles Wuorinen.   

In recent years, McDermott participated in the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s Silver Jubilee all-Gershwin program and embarked on a cycle of Beethoven concertos at Santa Fe Pro Musica. She also premiered and recorded a new concerto by the Danish composer Poul Ruders with the Vancouver Symphony, alongside Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations, and returned to play Gershwin with the New York Philharmonic at Bravo! Vail. Other recent highlights include performing the Mozart Concerto, K. 595 with The Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Sir Donald Runnicles; the Bach D minor concerto with members of The Philadelphia Orchestra; and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the New York City-based Le Train Bleu.  

McDermott continues to perform with many leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the symphonies of Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Colorado, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Atlanta, San Diego, New Jersey, Columbus, and Baltimore. She has also toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow Virtuosi.

McDermott, who studied at the Manhattan School of Music, is a winner of the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women, the Young Concert Artists auditions, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She lives in New York City with her husband Michael.