A Touching and Humanistic Musical Story on Film
with Ax, Fleming and Ma

Ten years ago Peter Oundjian, who had helped to make the Tokyo String Quartet one of music’s most admired voices, faced an uncertain future as a victim of focal dystonia.  Today, he is Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, one of North America’s great ensembles, and a sought-after guest with some of the world’s finest orchestras.

While Peter was on his way to becoming a favorite partner of renowned soloists and orchestral musicians around the world, the Toronto Symphony was facing financial and structural challenges that brought them to the brink of extinction.  Happily, their exciting new partnership has brought many full houses and the start of a major capital campaign to help secure the future of the Orchestra.

The triumph against steep odds for both Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony and the remarkable days that celebrated the opening of their first season together in September 2004 with special guests Emanuel Ax, Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma have been captured in a fascinating documentary – “Five Days in September: The Re-birth of an Orchestra.”  Nominated for the  Vancouver International Film Festival and produced by award-winning  Rhombus Media (Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach Suites was one of their recent acclaimed projects), the film is a marvelous mix of great music-making and a fascinating view into the inner workings of a leading orchestra and their charismatic music director.  It will be aired in Canada on BRAVO! on October 15 and will be released on DVD with director’s cuts and supplementary material in November.

With a summer that took him from the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Mozart Festival, which he has led for the last four years, to the opening of the Caramoor Festival, where he serves as Artistic Advisor and Principal Conductor, Peter Oundjian also appeared in the Grand Teton, Aspen and Tanglewood Festivals.

He has a full and fascinating Fall, from Washington’s National Symphony with Beethoven’s Eroica;  San Francisco Symphony with Vaughn Williams Symphony # 6; Philadelphia Orchestra with Martinu Symphony # 6; Colorado with All-Beethoven and Pittsburgh with Mahler, Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss to four weeks with his Toronto Symphony – Berlioz and Martinu symphonie fantastiques,  Mahler Symphony # 5, a new commission and Rachmaninoff Symphony # 2. 

In the New Year, eight weeks in Toronto offer a diversity of repertoire in two festivals that Peter inaugurated – Mozart in January and “New Creations” in March, the latter including works by Jacques Hetu, Melinda Wagner, John Adams,  Alexander Lekovich, Peter Lieberson coupled with the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra.  The Spring will also find Peter Oundjian conducting  Shostakovich, Beethoven, Haydn, Bernstein, Strauss’ Aslo sprach Zarathustra and a Sibelius/Wagner program will close the TSO season. 

To that, add continuing relationships between January and May with the orchestras of Detroit, Houston, Colorado, St. Louis, Phoenix, Philadelphia and his first appearance with Myung-Whun Chung’s Radio Philharmonique in Paris.  2006-07 continues on the same exciting course with a Beethoven cycle and some Mahler in Toronto; another two weeks in Philadelphia; many of the same North American partners; as well as a return to Berlin and new collaborations with  the orchestras of Baltimore and New Jersey. 

We hope that soon you all will get to share Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony on tour.