Mediterranean Youth Orchestra
As part of the Festival d'Aix since 2014, the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra (MYO) offers talented young musicians from the Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of France and from the Mediterranean basin an immersion in the professional life of ensemble and orchestra musicians. For more than 30 years now, the MYO shares the pleasure of performing the symphonic repertory composed for large orchestras, and has placed creation and intercultural exchanges at the heart of its programmes.
CONTACTS
Symphonic Session — Mathilde Lamy — mathilde.lamy@festival-aix.com
Intercultural Medinea Session — Elodie Ughetto — elodie.ughetto@festival-aix.com
— Every year, some one hundred young Mediterranean musicians representing 20 or so different countries attend the MYO's sessions: the symphonic session conducted by Duncan Ward and the Medinea session conducted by Fabrizio Cassol.They receive a high-level training and benefit from the presence of the prestigious artists in residence at the Festival d'Aix. The young musicians selected through auditions organised in the Mediterranean region in cooperation with the different national youth orchestras and music schools are brought together in a group residency and subsequently perform in concerts or participate in tours.
— Determined to support today's young musicians in the transition towards professional life, the Académie du Festival d'Aix also proposes a programme to raise awareness of outreach activities and career development paths that offers occasional professional engagements to MYO musicians.
— Created at the initiative of the Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region and the Ministry of Culture, the MYO has been active in the Mediterranean cultural space since 1984. It has forged relations based on exchange and cooperation with some 20 neighbouring countries and over 2,700 young musicians have attended at least one session since its inception. In 2014, at the request of the public authorities, it became a component of the Festival d'Aix, while retaining its original missions and goals. In January 2020, the young and talented British conductor, Duncan Ward is appointed, for three years, very first music director of the symphonic session of the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra and will lead the young musicians until 2023, with the participation of instrumentalists from the London Symphony Orchestra.
With the support of
