Utopia is a new international project of the conductor Teodor Currentzis. From a formal point of view, Utopia is the international orchestra that seeks to bring together the best musicians from all around the world, which is structurally, financially, and organizationally independent of any other collectives and institutions. In its substance, it is an idealistic attempt to find an approach to music creation which makes it possible to reach the inner essence of a musical text.
The idea of Utopia emerged several years ago. Its point of departure is the simple truth that the willingness of musicians to devote themselves to serious preparatory and research work is just as important as musical mastery in order to achieve visionary artistic goals. Therefore, Utopia is not so much an orchestra in the conventional sense of the word, but rather a special creative community, a team of like-minded people with a shared musical ideology. They join together to create without compromise what their musical imagination comes up with in order to find the best sound.
Utopia is the orchestra based on the time-limited association of musicians from all over the world. The musicians come together specifically to create each new programme. The cast of the orchestra varies depending on the instruments stipulated in the score. 116 musicians from 30 countries took part in the first project: Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK, Ukraine, the USA, and Venezuela.
The orchestra is funded with proceeds from concerts and supported by Kunst und Kultur DM Privatstiftung and various European patrons.
Two tours of the new orchestra have been scheduled for the 2022/23 season. The first Utopia concerts were given in October 2022. The orchestra performed Igor Stravinsky’s and Maurice Ravel’s pieces in some of Europe’s most important venues supporting the project, namely Philharmonie Luxembourg, Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Wiener Konzerthaus, and also in the Berliner Philharmonie. In June 2023 in a series of concerts Utopia will present its interpretation of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3.