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The Orford Academy Orchestra (OAO!) workshop was designed to meet an ever-growing need in the musical community: offering in-depth orchestral training to young musicians to prepare them for dealing with the competition inherent in the music community.

This three-week orchestra workshop provides young musicians a comprehensive musical experience through a broad range of workshops, master classes, sectional rehearsals, and orchestra rehearsals. The overall program offers each student a truly unique learning experience under the guidance of high-caliber teachers and coaches, some of whom are section leaders in the Montréal Symphony Orchestra.

Once again this year, the orchestra will present three concert programs under the baton of Maestro Jean-François Rivest, based on standard orchestration. As a result, OAO! musicians will be able to develop within this highly refined style with a novel touch: the internationally renowned bow maker Louis Bégin has agreed to lend a complete collection of his classical bows to Orford students for the occasion.

This season's repertoire will include Mozart's Haffner and Jupiter symphonies; a slightly abridged concert version of the opera Le Nozze di Figaro; Beethoven's Seventh Symphony; Vivaldi's Four Seasons; Mendelssohn's the Hebrides overture; and Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1.

Internationally renowned conductor Maestro Kent Nagano will conduct a public rehearsal. During another public activity, certain members of the orchestra (selected in a competition at the start of the course) will perform a concerto* with the Orford Academy Orchestra.

Each day will start off with the traditional session of qi gong (a simplified variation of tai chi). All students will be encouraged to attend our humanities series of conferences on a variety of enlightening topics such as fine arts, history, and travel.

The Orford Arts Orchestra experience gives young musicians the chance to play pieces from great orchestral repertoire and to learn under the best of conditions and with the most outstanding teachers, all in a unique atmosphere of community spirit fostering the overall development of their artistic personalities.

The end-of-course concert will be reprised in Montréal in the MSO's new concert hall, La Maison Symphonique.