Now in his 24th season, Franz Welser-Möst continues to shape an unmistakable sound culture as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. Under his leadership, the Orchestra has earned repeated international acclaim for its musical excellence, reaffirmed its strong commitment to new music, and brought opera back to the stage of Severance Music Center. In recent years, the Orchestra also launched its own streaming platform, Adella.live, and a recording label. Today, it boasts one of the youngest audiences in the United States.

In addition to residencies in the US and Europe, Welser-Möst and the Orchestra perform regularly at the world’s leading international festivals. Welser-Möst will remain Music Director until 2027, making him the longest-serving music director of The Cleveland Orchestra.

Welser-Möst enjoys a particularly close and productive artistic partnership with the Vienna Philharmonic. He regularly conducts the orchestra in subscription concerts at the Vienna Musikverein, at the Salzburg Festival, and on tour in Europe, Japan, China, and the US, and has appeared three times on the podium for their celebrated New Year’s Concert (2011, 2013, and 2023). At the Salzburg Festival, Welser- Möst has set new standards in interpretation as an opera conductor, with a special focus on the operas of Richard Strauss.

Among Welser-Möst’s many honors and awards, he was named an Honorary Member of the Vienna Philharmonic in 2024, one of the orchestra’s highest distinctions.

Bass-baritone Dashon Burton’s 2025–26 season highlights include Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Fidelio with The Cleveland Orchestra, Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer with the New Jersey Symphony, Britten’s War Requiem with the Erie Philharmonic, and Handel’s Messiah at Augustana College. He also appears in recital at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

A three-time Grammy Award winner, Burton earned Best Classical Solo Vocal Album in 2021 for Ethyl Smyth’s The Prison with the Experiential Orchestra, and has twice won with the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, of which he is a founding member. His discography also includes Songs of Struggle & Redemption: We Shall Overcome, Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road, and Caroline Shaw’s The Listeners with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

Burton holds degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory and Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music. He is assistant professor of voice at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.