Go to Music Up Close website MUSIC UP CLOSE Network – connecting orchestral music to young audiences is a multiannual project of European Orchestras and international Organizations for artistic mobility designed as a start-up for a long term European cooperation network to give concrete answers to the current challenges in the field of orchestral music. The Project features world-class Orchestras, some of which have a strong reputation for delivering projects for young audiences and cultivating a new generation of talented musicians within their internal Higher Music Education Departments and Education & Community Departments such as the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Lille National Orchestra, Santa Cecilia Symphony Orchestra. Other Orchestra partners such as the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra, Montenegrin Symphonic Orchestra and Ljubljana International Orchestra must improve their activities to reach young audiences and promote new orchestral works. Project Partners consider MUSIC UP CLOSE Network a start-up organization because they would like first to experiment and share new strategies to connect orchestral music to young audiences and then to enlarge the Network to new orchestra partner and create the conditions for long term sustainability. Music Up Close is an EU-funded Creative Europe project managed by the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Italy), Sweden, in collaboration with several national orchestras in Europe (Bosnia, France, Netherlands, Montenegro, Slovenia, Spain), as well as the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, the Lazio Region and Regesta.Exe (IT partner). The network is designed as a start-up to experiment with and provide long-term solutions to the current challenges facing world-class orchestras today. The orchestral partners have a good reputation in working on initiatives to attract young audiences and cultivating a new generation of talented musicians. The aim is to develop strategies to connect orchestral music with young audiences, first within the project network, and then to expand this network to new orchestra partners and other international institutions. ACTIONS The following priorities are being addressed:

• “Transnational mobility”: fostering the transnational rotation of artists and professionals in 12 European countries, commissioning new multinational orchestral works by living composers to promote intercultural dialogue and co-producing concert tours in innovative formats with young orchestral ensembles and choirs;
• “Audience development”: experimenting and sharing audience development strategies, particularly with the Balkan countries, producing concerts in innovative formats targeted at young people, using cross-media tools to reach young and under-represented audiences;
• “Capacity building: training and education”: strengthening professional operators with skills and know-how to operate transnationally, in particular, promoting the Work Experience Exchange Program and promoting Musical Residencies for orchestral training for young professional musicians.

The International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation is committed to organising an annual 7-day artistic residency in Belgium between 2017 and 2019 for approximately 15-20 young artists, using innovative multidisciplinary techniques to enhance multinational collaboration and co-creation.