Raised in Los Angeles, conductor Ryan Bancroft has rapidly built an international career which takes him all over the globe working with many of the world’s leading orchestras. Since September 2021 Bancroft has been Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. In September 2023 he became Chief Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. He also holds the position of Artist-in-Association with the Tapiola Sinfonietta in Finland.

After opening his tenure as Chief Conductor in Stockholm with the orchestra’s first performance of Sven-David Sandström’s The High Mass in 2023, Bancroft’s first two seasons have included performances of Mahler and Bruckner symphonies alongside world premieres by Chrichan Larson and Zacharias Wolfe, whilst working with renowned soloists including Emmanuel Ax, Leif Ove Andsnes, Maxim Vengerov and Víkingur Ólafsson. In 25/26, Bancroft will continue to partner important Swedish composers such as Allan Pettersson, Tebogo Monnakgotla and Wilhelm Stenhammar with established works in the classical canon by Prokofiev, Berlioz and Shostakovich.

In August 2023 Bancroft returned to Los Angeles to make his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. In the 25/26 season he returns to conduct them at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in their subscription series which follows on from his critically acclaimed debut at the venue in April 2025. Elsewhere in the US this season he makes his debuts with the St Louis, Houston and New World Symphony Orchestras, following recent successful debuts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco and Dallas Symphony Orchestras. He has close relationships in Canada with the Toronto Symphony and National Arts Centre, Ottawa.

In the 25/26 season, Bancroft will make his debuts with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican with Clara-Jumi Kang, and with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo with Thomas Hampson. He will also continue his relationships with orchestras such as the Philharmonia, the NDR Elbphilharmonieorchester, and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. In recent seasons, he has led the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Orquesta Sinfonica Castilla y Leon.

Since his success at the prestigious Malko Competition for Young Conductors in 2018, where he won both First Prize and Audience Prize, Bancroft has conducted a number of other leading European orchestras including the BBC Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Rai Torino.

Bancroft has a passion for contemporary music and has performed with Ensemble Intercontemporain, Amsterdam’s acclaimed Nieuw Ensemble, assisted Pierre Boulez in a performance of his Sur Incises in Los Angeles, premiered works by Sofia Gubaidulina, John Cage, Anders Hillborg, and has worked closely with improvisers such as Wadada Leo Smith and Charlie Haden.

Bancroft studied trumpet at the California Institute of the Arts, alongside additional studies in harp, flute, cello, and Ghanaian music and dance. He then went on to receive an MMus in orchestral conducting from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. While studying in Scotland he played trumpet with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on many occasions. He continued his conducting studies in the Netherlands and is a graduate of the prestigious Nationale Master Orkestdirectie run jointly by the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. As a student, his main mentors were Edward Carroll, Kenneth Montgomery, Ed Spanjaard and Jac van Steen.

Blessed with ‘poetic and sensitive pianism’ (Washington Post) and a ‘wondrous sense of color’ (San Francisco Classical Voice), Grammy-nominated pianist Joyce Yang captivates audiences with her virtuosity, lyricism, and interpretive sensitivity. 

She first came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she took home two additional awards: Best Performance of Chamber Music (with the Takàcs Quartet), and Best Performance of a New Work. In 2006 Yang made her celebrated New York Philharmonic debut alongside Lorin Maazel at Avery Fisher Hall along with the orchestra’s tour of Asia, making a triumphant return to her hometown of Seoul, South Korea. Yang’s subsequent appearances with the New York Philharmonic have included opening night of the 2008 Leonard Bernstein Festival – an appearance made at the request of Maazel in his final season as music director. The New York Times pronounced her performance in Bernstein's The Age of Anxiety a 'knockout.'

In the last decade, Yang has blossomed into an ‘astonishing artist’ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), showcasing her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber musicians through more than 1,000 debuts and re-engagements. She received the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant and earned her first Grammy nomination (Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance) for her recording of Franck, Kurtág, Previn & Schumann with violinist Augustin Hadelich (‘One can only sit in misty-eyed amazement at their insightful flair and spontaneity.’ – The Strad). She has become a staple of the summer festival circuit with frequent appearances on the programs of the Aspen Summer Music Festival, La Jolla SummerFest and the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

Other notable orchestral engagements have included the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the BBC Philharmonic, as well as the Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, and New Zealand symphony orchestras. She was also featured in a five-year Rachmaninoff concerto cycle with Edo de Waart and the Milwaukee Symphony, to which she brought ‘an enormous palette of colors, and tremendous emotional depth’ (Milwaukee Sentinel Journal). 

In solo recital, Yang’s innovative program has been praised as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘kaleidoscopic’ (Los Angeles Times). She has performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Chicago’s Symphony Hall and Zurich’s Tonhalle. In 2018, Musica Viva presented Yang in an extensive recital tour throughout Australia. 

As an avid chamber musician, Yang has collaborated with the Takács Quartet for Dvořák – part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series – and Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet with members of the Emerson String Quartet at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. Yang has fostered an enduring partnership with the Alexander String Quartet, which continues in the 2018/2019 season with performances in Davis, Tucson, San Francisco, Dallas, Aliso Viejo, Rockville and Seattle. Following their debut disc of Brahms and Schumann Quintets, their recording of Mozart’s Piano Quartets was released in July 2018 (FoghornClassics). Jerry Dubins of Fanfare Magazine wrote that the renditions were ‘by far, hands down and feet up, the most amazing performances of Mozart’s two piano quartets that have ever graced these ears.’ 

Yang’s wide-ranging discography includes the world premiere recording of Michael Torke’s Piano Concerto, created expressly for Yang and commissioned by the Albany Symphony. Yang has also ‘demonstrated impressive gifts’ (New York Times) with the release of Wild Dreams (Avie Records), on which she plays Schumann, Bartók, Hindemith, Rachmaninoff, and arrangements by Earl Wild. She recorded Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Denmark’s Odense Symphony Orchestra that International Record Review called ‘hugely enjoyable, beautifully shaped … a performance that marks her out as an enormous talent.’ Of her 2011 debut album for Avie Records, Collage, featuring works by Scarlatti, Liebermann, Debussy, Currier, and Schumann, Gramophone praised her 'imaginative programming' and 'beautifully atmospheric playing.'

Born in 1986 in Seoul, South Korea, Yang received her first piano lesson from her aunt at the age of four. She quickly took to the instrument, which she received as a birthday present. Over the next few years won several national piano competitions in her native country. By the age of ten, she had entered the School of Music at the Korea National University of Arts, and went on to make a number of concerto and recital appearances in Seoul and Daejeon. In 1997, Yang moved to the United States to begin studies at the pre-college division of the Juilliard School with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky. During her first year at Juilliard, Yangwon the pre-college division Concerto Competition, resulting in a performance of Haydn’s Keyboard Concerto in D with the Juilliard Pre-College Chamber Orchestra. After winning the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Student Competition, she performed Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with that orchestra at just twelve years old. She graduated from Juilliard with special honor as the recipient of the school’s 2010 Arthur Rubinstein Prize, and in 2011 she won its 30th Annual William A. Petschek Piano Recital Award.

Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She is a Steinway artist.