Acclaimed as a cultural leader in his native Armenia and increasingly in demand on the international stage, Sergey Smbatyan is founder, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra. In September 2019, he became Principal Conductor of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra following highly successful tours of Germany, Austria and the United States with the orchestra, including performances at the Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna’s Musikverein and Carnegie Hall.

Armed with the experience of building a symphony orchestra from scratch, Sergey Smbatyan has created four other orchestras in recent years. In 2015 he founded the 24/04 Orchestra to commemorate the centenary of the Armenian Genocide and the “Generation of Independence” All-Armenian Choir and Orchestra to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Armenia’s independence. He also founded the UNICEF Children’s Chamber Orchestra, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Pan‑Armenian Symphony Orchestra, an initiative intended to unite Armenians around the world. The remit of his work as educator and innovator extends to "DasA", a high school project offering a close-up experience with classical music.

Sergey Smbatyan’s guest conducting career has flourished in recent seasons, leading to concerts with Sinfonia Varsovia, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and, among others, the Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin. He returned to the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra during the 2021/2022 season for a European tour comprising concerts at the Berliner Philharmonie and the Vienna Musikverein and is set to direct the օrchestra’s first UK tour in the 2022/2023 season.

The Italian conductor Gianluca Marcianò has been increasingly in demand since his opera debut with Croatian National Opera in 2007. Marcianò works with opera houses in Oviedo, Minsk, Ljubljana and Yerevan, as well as in the UK.

Marcianò is the Artistic Director of the Al Bustan Festival in Beirut. He is also the founder and the Artistic Director of the Festival Suoni dal Golfo in Lerici and the Principal Guest Conductor of the National Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus. From 2011 to 2014 he held the position of Musical Director/Principal Conductor of the Tbilisi State Opera. From 2017 till 2019 Gianluca Marcianò was the Principal Conductor of Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad.

As an orchestral conductor, Marcianò has worked with many great instrumentalists, such as: Gautier Capuçon, Renaud Capuçon, Arabella Steinbacher, Anna Tifu, Francesca Dego, Steven Isserlis, Maria Joao Pires, David Geringas, Khatia Buniatishvili, Sergei Krylov, Sergei Nakariakov, Denis Kozhukhin and others.

His has conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia, Polish Baltic Philharmonic, Wroclaw Philharmonic, the Georgian Philharmonic, the Moscow City Russian Philharmonic, the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra and many others.