Armenian State Symphony Orchestra
A celebrated symphony orchestra at home and overseas, the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra emerged from a group of devout enthusiasts of classical music with the shared vision of championing spiritual excellence through music and upholding the musical traditions of their native Armenia.

The orchestra performs over 50 concerts in Armenia and across the world annually. The rich and diverse repertoire of the orchestra covers multiple genres and performance formats, ranging from symphonies to ballet and opera music to symphonic arrangements of popular and cinematic music and jazz interpretations of classical music.

Along with recurrent debut performances of great masterpieces from the world heritage of classical music, the orchestra places a considerable importance in exposing contemporary and young composers as well, featuring new works in its mainstream programming.

Reputed to have finely distinct quality of sound and emotionally charged performance style, the orchestra has long become an awaited guest in leading concert halls around the world.

Together with its Founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, Sergey Smbatyan, the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra has established four annual classical music festivals, hosting in Armenia a multitude of internationally renowned virtuoso performers and conductors over years.

Elias Peter Brown
works as a conductor, composer, improviser, and curator, seeking to create meaningful spaces for listening in and out of the concert hall. He has been named a Salonen Fellow for 2023/24, where he will be personally mentored by Esa-Pekka Salonen and serve as assistant conductor at the San Francisco Symphony, while also working as assistant conductor with the Colburn Conservatory Orchestra in the Nagaunee Conducting Program.

Rain Worthington
Believing that creativity is an elemental and essential part of human nature, Rain Worthington has followed her own instinctive path. Self-taught and cross-disciplinary, her creative impulses include concert music and sculptural spaces for attentive reflection. American Record Guide notes a focus of “deep interiority” from “a composer of considerable imagination, emotional expressiveness, and poetic sensibility.”

Through her journey, Worthington’s work and career has been the subject of more than two dozen podcasts, articles, and video interviews. Her music has been performed from downtown New York City clubs to uptown Carnegie Hall, with orchestral premieres in the United States, Brazil, Italy, Croatia, and Armenia.

Most recently, in tandem with her career as a composer, she has re-embraced an early passion for sculpture. Pulled toward the potency of awe and transformative spaces, Worthington is moving beyond traditional concert venues to explore a cross-disciplinary artistic vision of sculptural “listening spaces” infused with her music. These contemplative environments tap into a deep primal fluidity of subliminal connections and emotional responses.

She has received music commissions from NY Philharmonic violinist Audrey Wright, the Palisades Virtuosi Trio, and the Portland Youth Philharmonic. PARMA Recordings has released two full portrait albums of her music, PASSAGES THROUGH TIME and DREAM VAPORS.

Worthington currently serves on the International Alliance for Women in Music board as Advocacy Chair, and from 2006–2021, was Artistic Administrator and Composer Advocate for the New York Women Composers.