MCO Academy NRW networks internationally // 13.02.2012
Wherever the MCO performs, it is committed to international networking and cultural exchange. This applies also to its promotion of new young talent: the MCO Academy NRW, founded by the MCO and the Orchesterzentrum|NRW in Dortmund to provide education and advanced training to orchestral musicians, brought two new partners on board this season. Young musicians from Barcelona and Manchester will join the ranks of the MCO for the first time in the upcoming concerts in Dortmund, Essen, and Cologne, under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Berlin, 13. February 2012 – Up until now, only the students of the Orchesterzentrum|NRW and the four North Rhine-Westphalia conservatories (Detmold, Düsseldorf, Essen, and Cologne) were invited to apply for the MCO Academy concerts. For the first time, this year two external partners will also participate: the Catalan youth orchestra association JONC in Barcelona and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. The collaboration with these institutions has been conceived of as a long-term one, with both enlisted to take part in projects over the next years. Thus the young musician participants will already have new opportunities to network internationally during the course of their studies. Altogether, twenty-four students qualified for the 2012 MCO Academy concert, thirteen of them from the Orchesterzentrum|NRW in Dortmund, eight from Barcelona, and three from Manchester. The MCO Academy NRW offers young orchestral musicians a hands-on educational model, oriented towards the future and designed to network them internationally. This includes instrumental instruction and practice auditions provided by MCO members, who make not only their wealth of orchestral experience available but also in some cases the knowledge gained from professorships and teaching assignments at Europe’s most prestigious conservatories (Paris, Florence, and Berlin, among others). In chamber music workshops, students deepen their approach to exactly the skills that MCO musicians consider the artistic underpinnings of the orchestra: highly sensitive listening and communicating in a group of keen, independent musical personalities.
The Academy’s centerpiece is the annual series of MCO Academy concerts led by a renowned conductor, where students who have played a successful audition are invited to join the ranks of MCO members. Scholarships from the MCO Foundation are available to exceptionally gifted students, facilitating their participation in an MCO project outside of the Academy. This can then serve as a stepping stone to regular invitations to perform on international MCO tours.
The first MCO Academy concert took place in 2009 under the direction of Daniel Harding, with the subsequent two projects led by Ton Koopman and Pierre Boulez respectively. Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen is committed to take on the up-coming Academy project. Salonen currently holds a residency as Exclusive Artist at the Konzerthaus Dortmund and is already well-acquainted with the MCO: he conducted the MCO in March of 2010 for the Italian premiere of his own violin concerto. The impending MCO Academy concert’s programme, which Salonen put together, will also include one of his own works, Foreign Bodies, at the behest of the orchestra and organizers. The programme is rounded out with Olivier Messiaen´s Un sourire and two pieces by Finnish national composer Jean Sibelius: the violin concerto with the young Norwegian Vilde Frang as soloist, and the symphonic poem Pohjola’s Daughter.
Prior to the project’s start, a workshop phase will occur at the Orchesterzentrum in Dortmund, in which participating students from all the institutions involved will prepare with group lessons, section rehearsals, and chamber music workshops, all aimed at this specific project.
