Manfred Honeck is currently in his 18th season as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. His tenure, extended through the 2027–28 season, has seen the PSO flourish both artistically and as a cultural ambassador for Pittsburgh. The orchestra’s appearances under his leadership include Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, as well as the BBC Proms, Salzburg Festival, Musikfest Berlin, and Lucerne Festival. His recordings with the PSO on the Reference Recordings label have received multiple Grammy Award nominations, including a win for Best Orchestral Performance in 2018. They recently released the album Requiem: Mozart’s Death in Words and Music, encompassing Honeck’s interpretation of Mozart’s Requiem.

Born in Austria, Honeck completed his musical training at the University of Music in Vienna. His many years of experience as a violist in the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Orchestra have had a lasting influence on his work as a conductor, and his art of interpretation is rooted in a desire to venture deep beneath the surface of the music. He has since served as a principal conductor of the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony, music director of Norwegian National Opera, principal guest conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic and Czech Philharmonic, and chief conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony. In 2023, he was appointed honorary conductor by the Bamberg Symphony, following decades of close collaboration.

As a guest conductor, Manfred Honeck is a regular presence with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, London Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome, and has conducted all the major American orchestras. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in May 2017.

Honeck holds honorary doctorates from several American universities, was named an honorary professor by the president of Austria, and was named 2018 “artist of the year” by the International Classical Music Awards.

This season, Ying Fang makes her house debut at Houston Grand Opera, appears with Vienna State Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra (in Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall), and records Mahler’s Second Symphony with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck. Further highlights include the Vienna Philharmonic, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and Salzburg Festival. A noted Mozart interpreter, she debuted last season at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro; debuted at the Bavarian State Opera as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte; and debuted at San Francisco Opera as Ilia in Idomeneo. She frequently appears at the Metropolitan Opera and is a former member of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut with Handel’s Messiah in December 2018.

A native of Ningbo, China, Fang is the recipient of the Martin E. Segal Award, Hildegard Behrens Foundation Award, Rose Bampton Award of the Sullivan Foundation, Opera Index Award, and first prize of the Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition. In 2009, she became one of the youngest singers to win the China Golden Bell Award for Music. She studied at the Juilliard School and Shanghai Conservatory.

Two-time Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Seattle Opera, Opéra National de Bordeaux, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, among others, and with more than 100 symphony orchestras worldwide. This season, she sings Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the Minnesota Orchestra, Ravel’s Shéhérazade with the Houston Symphony, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Orchestre National de France, a world premiere by Bernard Foccroulle and Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer with the London Symphony Orchestra, Verdi’s Requiem with the Baltimore Symphony, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Chicago Symphony, among other appearances.

Cooke made her San Francisco Symphony debut in June 2009 and became a Shenson Young Artist in January 2010. She toured Europe with Michael Tilson Thomas and the Symphony, premiered MTT’s Meditations on Rilke (captured on a Grammy-winning SFS Media release), and recorded two of MTT’s songs on Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas. Last season, she sang Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été with the Symphony and Music Director Designate Elim Chan.

Cooke is a graduate of Rice University and the Juilliard School. She also attended the Music Academy of the West, Aspen Music Festival, Ravinia Festival’s Stearns Music Institute, Wolf Trap Foundation, Marlboro Music Festival, and the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.

David Portillo appears this season with the Dutch National Opera, Seattle Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Baroque, and the English Concert. In recent seasons, he has also appeared with the Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Washington National Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and Bard Music Festival. In Europe, he has performed at the Vienna State Opera, Theater an der Wien, Frankfurt Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne Festival, and Salzburg Festival. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut with these performances.

Portillo is an alumnus of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera, and Wolf Trap Opera. In 2024, he was awarded the Sphinx Medal of Excellence.

Stephano Park’s engagements this season include Santa Fe Opera, Royal Danish Opera, Calgary Opera, the Milwaukee Symphony, and Chicago Symphony for Mozart’s Requiem with Manfred Honeck. He has also performed with the Baltic Opera Festival, Korean National Opera, and Korean National Symphony. Park recently completed his second season as part of the Vienna State Opera’s studio, where his roles have included Walter Furst in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Lodovico in Verdi’s Otello, Sid in Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, the Jailer in Puccini’s Tosca, and Hans Schwarz in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut with these performances.

Park was the winner of the 2023 Operalia in Cape Town, South Africa. He trained at Seoul National University and continues his studies at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts.

Adrian Roberts has been a professional actor for more than 30 years, appearing in many local and regional theater productions. His Bay Area credits include George in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Prospero in The Tempest at Oakland Theater Project, Martin Luther King Jr. in The Mountaintop at Theater Works, King Basillio in Life Is A Dream and Claudius in Hamlet at Cal Shakes, Willy in "Master Harold”...and the Boys at the Aurora Theater, and the title role in Macbeth at African American Shakes. His regional credits include Ken in Playboy of the West Indies at Lincoln Center, Asagai in Raisin in the Sun at the Huntington Theater, and three seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Roberts’s television credits include Scrubs, Criminal Minds, Chance, and the web series Normal Ain’t Normal. He has also appeared in the video game NBA 2K, 2022, 2024, and 2025. He is a graduate of ACT’s MFA program and makes his San Francisco Symphony debut with this program.

Jenny Wong is Chorus Director of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as the associate artistic director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Recent conducting engagements include the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, the Industry, Long Beach Opera, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, Phoenix Chorale, and Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

Under Wong’s baton, the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s performance of Frank Martin’s Mass was named for Alex Ross one of ten “Notable Performances and Recordings of 2022” in the New Yorker. In 2021 she was a national recipient of Opera America’s inaugural Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors. She has conducted Peter Sellars’s staging of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro, Sweet Land by Du Yun and Raven Chacon, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar with the Long Beach Opera in collaboration with WildUp. She has prepared choruses for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including for a recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 that won a 2022 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.

A native of Hong Kong, Wong received her doctor of musical arts and master of music degrees from the University of Southern California and her undergraduate degree in voice performance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She won two consecutive world champion titles at the World Choir Games 2010 and the International Johannes Brahms Choral Competition 2011. She recently extended her contract with the SF Symphony through the 2028–29 season.