Sharing our Music with the World

MSO.LIVE

Launched in late 2020, MSO’s digital contentviewing platform, MSO.LIVE, continued across 2022 delivering performances and learning and engagement events to viewers in 59 countries. Functioning as a digital gateway into MSO’s offering, MSO.LIVE increases access to the orchestral artform beyond the physical concert hall, providing a centralised, integrated portal through which music-lovers can engage with the MSO.

Aligning with MSO’s broader commitment to promoting Australian arts and artists, in 2022 a strategic focus of MSO.LIVE was to provide a platform to support the post-COVID-19 arts ecology recovery by facilitating collaborative paid performance opportunities and global visibility to Australian arts organisations and artists.

Performance highlights shared on MSO.LIVE in 2022 included livestreams of the popular Sidney Myer Music Bowl concerts A Symphonic Soiree and One Song: The Music of Archie Roach in February, Music and Ideas: Spinifex Gum live and on demand in July, and MSO’s Learning and Engagement program Ears Wide Open featuring Dvořák’s Symphony No.9 From the New World and Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 in July and October respectively. Also included was the 2022 Cybec Showcase, featuring the new works by the four emerging composers taking part in the MSO’s Cybec Young Composers Program, and the MSO’s perennially popular, Chinese New Year Concert.

With a rolling average of over 7,000 unique user per month, MSO.LIVE continues to contribute to the MSO’s—and the sector’s—long-term resilience and relevance in an ever-increasing digital world.

Chinese New Year Concert Broadcast in China

Recorded for MSO.LIVE, the MSO’s 2022 Chinese New Year concert was also shared through the Beijing Forum for Performing Arts website. The Forum is a collective of performing arts and related institutions around the world, initiated by the National Centre for Performing Arts (Beijing), which aims to build a platform for exchange and mutually beneficial cooperation.

The MSO’s Chinese New Year Concert was broadcast in multiple languages and has now been viewed more than 22 million times. In the spirit of collaboration, the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra (Beijing) concert, Côte D’azur featuring Lü Jia and Chen Sa, has been a feature of MSO.LIVE.

Digital collaboration with the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra

In celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2022, the MSO and the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra —based in Victoria’s sister-province, Sichuan— joined together to create a special musical offering. Thanks to generous support from the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations, the two orchestras collaborated to create a digital performance of Joy at the Sunrise.

Commissioned by the MSO and arranged by Australian-American composer Erik Griswold and performed by the MSO’s friends at the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra, this well-known song from the mountainous Sichuan region is testimony to MSO’s belief in music’s power to unite people across borders. This beautiful musical showpiece was shared widely in both Australia and China, and forms the initial phase of the MSO’s multiyear collaboration with the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra.

“The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has the wonderful honour of bringing people together, through the shared language of music. As a truly global orchestra we are proud to foster, exchange and build cultural understanding, both within our vibrant city of Melbourne, and around the world. Thanks to the generous support from the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations, we are delighted to collaborate with musicians from Victoria’s sister-province orchestra, the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra, to create a musical offering celebrating [the 2022] Mid-Autumn festivities.”

– Sophie Galaise, Managing Director

ABC Classic FM

In a decades-long partnership, the MSO continued to broadcast its concerts, both live and delayed, on ABC Classic FM enabling the MSO to reach audiences throughout Australia and the world. The MSO’s Sidney Myer Free Concerts A Symphonic Soiree, and An Evening of John Williams were broadcast live, while many concerts were recorded and broadcast throughout the year including Bartok and Beethoven, Metropolis: The Lost, Hidden Gems, and Death and Desire: Strauss and Dvořak, among others.

– WANG of China's National Centre for Performing Arts and Chairperson of the Beijing Forum for Performing Arts