Artist Group: 2026-2027

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize. Emanuel Ax was recently named the 2026 Musical America Artist of the Year.

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of his first appearance with the orchestra, the 2025/26 season begins with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall on October 31. Fall also includes an Asian tour that will take him to Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong. Following the world premiere at Tanglewood in summer 2025, the concerto written for him by John Williams will have its Boston Symphony subscription debut in January with the NY premiere one month later with New York Philharmonic. As a guest artist he will return to orchestras in Dallas, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Madison, Naples and New Jersey. In recital he can be heard in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Santa Barbara, Des Moines, Cedar Falls, Schenectady and Princeton. An extensive European tour will include concerts in Munich, Prague, Berlin, Rome and Torino.

Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).

Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University. For more information about Mr. Ax’s career, please visit EmanuelAx.com.

American violinist Isabelle Ai Durrenberger is nationally recognized for her deeply communicative musicianship and compelling presence as a collaborative artist. She performs extensively across the United States as first violinist of the Aeolus String Quartet, and appears regularly with the country’s leading chamber ensembles.

Recent engagements include tours with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and performances with the Boston Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Northwest, Marlboro Music Festival, The Knights, Jupiter Chamber Players, and A Far Cry. Based in New York City, Isabelle is a graduate of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, the renowned program cultivating artist-leaders through performance, education, and sustained community partnerships with New York City public schools.

Isabelle completed her graduate studies at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Soovin Kim and Donald Weilerstein. She grew up in Upper Arlington, Ohio, and was mentored by violinist and conductor Jaime Laredo throughout her high school and undergraduate years at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Her honors include top prizes at the Barbash Bach Competition, Irving M. Klein Competition, Cleveland Institute of Music Concerto Competition, and the Tuesday Musical First Prize Scholarship for Performance, as well as the Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award. As a soloist, she has appeared with orchestras including the Columbus Symphony, Asheville Symphony, and Lakeside Symphony Orchestra.

In 2022, Isabelle joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Her students have been admitted to leading conservatories and universities including The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Harvard University, Columbia University, Rice University, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Isabelle performs on a 2020 Sam Zygmuntowicz violin, generously loaned by a private patron.

Emmy-nominated trumpeter and singer Benny Benack III has proven to be that rarest of talents: not only a fiery trumpet player with a stirring command of the postbop trumpet vernacular in the vein of Kenny Dorham and Freddie Hubbard, but also a singer with a sly, mature, naturally expressive delivery in the postSinatra mold, performing standards and his own astute songs with a thrilling sense of showmanship. This duel-threat ability was recognized by the 2025 Downbeat Readers Poll where he won the category of Rising Star Male Vocalist, and placed #8 as a Rising Star Trumpeter as well. His superb intonation and bracing virtuosity enable him to handle astounding feats of originally composed vocalese (complex solos with written lyrics). On top of it all, he’s a highly capable pianist as well.

Benny has performed internationally as an Emcee/Host for the Youtube sensation Postmodern Jukebox, as well as national tours produced by Jazz @ Lincoln Center and IMG Artists. He achieved his own viral success amassing millions of views for his crooning alongside the Grammy-award winning “8-Bit Big Band”. In early 2020 he released A Lot of Livin’ to Do, the follow-up to his well-received 2017 debut One of a Kind. This sophomore effort, richly varied in mood and brimming with bop inflection, features bassist extraordinaire and Jazz ambassador Christian McBride (whose Grammy-award winning Big Band frequently calls upon Benny in the trumpet section) and drummer/producer Ulysses Owens, Jr., as well as the radiant Takeshi Ohbayashi on piano and Rhodes. His vocalese duet on “Social Call” from this album alongside fellow young star vocalist Veronica Swift became an instant smash hit single, being transcribed and learned by Jazz vocalists around the world. His last album “Third Time’s the Charm” features many stars including Peter Bernstein, Emmet Cohen & Bria Skonberg and was released in June 2023 to critical acclaim and charttopping success, reaching #2 on the JazzWeek National Radio Charts. In 2025 he releases his first-ever live album “This is the Life” recorded at the Blue LLama featuring his father Benny Jr. on sax and clarinet.

Alongside his global touring as a bandleader, Benny has appeared as a trumpet soloist in more commercial circles alongside Josh Groban, Ben Folds, fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi, Jeff Goldblum, Ann Hampton Callaway and more. He’s been featured at Birdland, Jazz @ Lincoln Center, Mezzrow, Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle and other leading New York venues, and has also been a special guest with the Pittsburgh Symphony Pops Orchestra, the Columbus Jazz Orchestra and the Minsk Philharmonic Orchestra. He made his television debut in NBC’s short-lived, SNL-inspired variety show “Maya & Marty” playing in the in-studio band led by acclaimed bassist & Broadway arranger Charlie Rosen. More recent TV credits include “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” where he’s performed in the House Band started by Jon Batiste. His global recognition has been bolstered by recent live-streaming concerts at Smalls Jazz Club, where he maintains a steady residency, as well as frequent appearances on fellow young lion Emmet Cohen’s smash-hit online concert series “Emmet’s Place”.

Third in a generational line of Pittsburgh jazz notables, Benny follows in the footsteps of his trumpeter/bandleader grandfather, Benny Benack, Sr. (1921-86), and his father Benny Benack, Jr., a saxophonist/clarinetist who gave the young Benny his first professional experience. Benny, Sr. hailed from a Pittsburgh lineage that also produced Roy Eldridge, Earl Hines, Art Blakey, Billy Strayhorn and so many more. He recorded the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 1960 theme song “Beat ’Em Bucs” and toured with Tommy Dorsey and Raymond Scott, among others. Benny III returns to Pittsburgh often to perform, saluting his family forebears and the jazz heritage as a whole, nonetheless staking his bold and highly individual artistic claim. He is an endorsing trumpet artist with Bach Brass/Conn Selmer Torpedo Bags cases and various menswear fashion lines including X-Suit, Alain Dupetit, Brisk Shirts, Proper Cloth & Vittone.