Orchestra UniMi

Orchestra UniMi was founded at the University of Milan in 2000 with the support of rector Paolo Mantegazza. It combined advanced orchestral training for young musicians, including those outside the university, with professional concert production. Under Alessandro Crudele's musical direction, it developed collaborations with international conductors and soloists and appeared at Zurich's Tonhalle, Leipzig's Gewandhaus and Vicenza's Teatro Olimpico. Its programming embraced living composers alongside the established repertoire. By its twentieth anniversary season, more than 600 young musicians had worked with the orchestra, whose free concerts formed part of the university's wider cultural life in Milan. This one belongs neither to a theatre nor to a broadcaster but to the Università degli Studi di Milano, whose abbreviation it carries. Mozart has figured in its recording work — repertoire that rewards a smaller, well-drilled body far more than a large one.