The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is a leading cultural figure in the Australian arts landscape, bringing the best in orchestral music and passionate performance to a diverse audience across the nation and around the world.
Each year the MSO engages with more than five million people through live concerts, TV, radio and online broadcasts, international and regional tours, recordings and education programmes.
The MSO is a vital presence, both onstage and in the community, in cultivating classical music in Australia. Internationally acclaimed, the Orchestra nurtures strong cultural partnerships throughout South East Asia. The MSO is the only Australian orchestra partnered with UNITEL, the world's leading distributor of classical music programs for film, television and video. It also has strong artistic partnerships with the National Centre for Performing Arts (Beijing) and Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra.
The MSO regularly attracts great artists from around the globe; including Lang Lang, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Renée Fleming as well as Artistic Ambassadors TAN Dun and Siqing Lu, while bringing Melbourne's finest musicians to the world through tours to China, Indonesia, Europe and the United States.
The nation's first professional orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has been the sound of the city of Melbourne since 1906. The MSO was the first Australian orchestra to perform overseas (1965) and the first to debut at Carnegie Hall (1970). In 2019 it won the AustCham Westpac Australia-China Business Award for Business Innovation, Creative Industries and the Digital Economy.
From its home at Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, to free summer concerts at Melbourne's largest outdoor venue, the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, to its Secret Symphony performances at unique inner-city locations, the MSO inspires a broad range of audiences with more than 160 concerts a year. It regularly broadcasts its Chinese New Year concerts across China.
Committed to shaping and serving the city it inhabits, the MSO regularly reaches beyond the customary classical audience by collaborating with artists such as Sting, Professor Brian Cox, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, Flight Facilities, Kate Miller-Heidke and Laura Mvula.
As a national ambassador for the arts and a champion of music education, the MSO campaigns for the rights of all people to access and learn music. Boasting carefully curated learning programs, a regional touring schedule, accessible concerts and free community events, the MSO provides opportunities for music lovers to be involved with the Orchestra, no matter their age or location.
