ICO rehearsing in Gdańsk, 23 August 2013, photo by Konrad Ćwik/ IAM
I, CULTURE Orchestra was first launched by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, as one of the leading projects of the cultural programme falling under the Polish presidency in the European Union in 2011.
The intention behind the project is to embody the idea of the Eastern Partnership, by bringing together young artists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Poland, and Ukraine. Moreover, the project organizers hope that it may become a trigger for positive changes within the international cultural and social fabric.
I, CULTURE Orchestra pays much respect to the cultural and musical heritage of the Central and Eastern Europe, at the same time catering for highest quality performance. The project mission is to attain artistic excellence, grounded in celebration of the cultural variety and shared responsibility for cultivating the wealth delivered from the respective backgrounds of the participants.
ICO has already performed three successful tours, during which it worked with very prominent directors, and throughout which it played at some of the most prestigious concert halls in Europe, such as the Berliner Philharmonie, London’s Royal Festival Hall, or Teatro Real in Madrid. The 2013 Tour included places such as Gdańsk, Reykjavik, Göteborg, Copenhagen, Tallinn, and Kiev.
The director during the August 2014 Tournée will be Kirill Karabits, and the cocerts of the ICO will take place at, among others, the Edinburgh International Festival. The repertoire will include Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major, ‘Leningrad’.
The auditions are open to musicians from the countries listed above, who are between 18-28 years old, and specialize in playing orchestra instruments.
The first stage of the auditions will take place online. The applicants are asked to register between 20/12/2013 and 23/01/2014, and upload their recordings of the required repertoire between 06/01/2014 and 26/01/2014, via the website auditions.orchestra.iam.pl.
The second stage of the ICO 2014 auditions will take place live in the following cities in March 2013: Warsaw, Gdańsk, Baku, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Odessa, Chișinău, Kiev, Lviv, and Minsk.
The new Orchestra participant names will be announced on 20/04/2014.
Mor information about the auditions may be found on the website auditions.orchestra.iam.pl.
Read more about I, CULTURE Orchestra: orchestra.iam.pl
Transl. AM 23.12.2013