The symphonic session of the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra (MYO) is designed to future professional classical musicians from the Mediterranean. This session offers an intercultural experience of the orchestra life in rehearsals, concert and on tour within the stimulating frame of the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and provides a high-level musical training. DUNCAN WARD—the British conductor and composer, and music director of the MYO’s symphonic sessions since 2020—has begun a new chapter in the long history of these sessions by choosing an engaged musical programme that features women composers and contemporary creation. Alongside musicians from the LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA and in close collaboration with conductor QUENTIN HINDLEY, he will be guiding roughly forty instrumentalists, taking them from rehearsals to concerts, in this immersive and educational experience in the life of an orchestra.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the difficulties for traveling that ensued, the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra was forced to cancel its recruitment campaign and the annual auditions that usually take place from November to March in roughly twenty cities in the Mediterranean area. The MYO team have worked to rethink the format of their symphonic session, and have decided to prioritize the participation of roughly forty musicians who were selected in 2020 and who followed the digital session.

CALENDAR

2021 Symphonic Session — July 10 — 23, 2021

CONCERTS
Aix-en-Provence — Grand Théâtre de Provence — 21 July 2021, 8pm
Montpellier — Festival Radio France – Occitanie Montpellier — 22 July 2021, 8pm
Mougins — Scène 55 — 23 July 2021, 9pm

MENTORS

Musical direction — Duncan Ward
Pedagogical coaching — London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and Quentin Hindley

MUSICAL PROGRAMME

Hannah Kendall — Tuxedo Vasco ‘de’ Gama
Maurice Ravel — Tombeau de Couperin, version for orchestra
Luciano Berio — Folk Songs, version for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (with Anna Stéphany)
Louise Farrenc — Symphony No.3 in G minor, Op. 3