Lahti Symphony Orchestra from Finland, Aurora Orchestra from the UK and the t@lenschool app from France are the three winners of the 2018 Classical:NEXT Innovation Awards. Good examples for other orchestras and ensembles to thrive their own innovation activities.

Awarded: Lahti Symphony

Lahti Symphony Orchestra from Finland was awarded for their efforts to reduce the pace of global climate change by gradually making the orchestra’s activities carbon-neutral. The project is backed by Myrskyvaroitus – Storm Warning Association and carried out in collaboration with the Lahti-based Environmental Technology unit of the Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT). On winning the award, Teemu Kirjonen from Lahti Symphony Orchestra said:

“Good planets are hard to find. Climate change is threatening the one we are living on at the moment. The project Carbon-Free Lahti Symphony Orchestra is not about the orchestra trying to be the superheroes and saving the world alone but one of the main principles is to raise attention that every one of us can, should and must do our share to save this planet for the future generation. We have the music, we have the arts and have all the means to reach everyone, all the societies, let’s do something big and let’s do it together”

Aurora Orchestra, the renowned and versatile British chamber orchestra were awarded for combining their highest-standard performances with adventurous programming and trailblazing concert experiences. Representing Aurora Orchestra, John Harte shared,

“The fact that this award is voted for not by an anonymous jury in a dusty room somewhere behind the closed doors, but by our colleagues and peers from around the globe is a source of particular pride and very honored to be shortlisted alongside just distinguished organizations, each of which is doing hugely important work in building the classical landscape of the future”

The t@lenschool project by Les Talens Lyriques from France were awarded for their innovation in creating musical practice and listening apps that assist with composing, conducting and playing the harpsichord.

Fabienne Krause: “A key competence of our everyday life in the performing arts is empathy, be it to establish co-operation for business, to lead an orchestra, to connect to audiences as an artist or manager or to give back to your communities. It’s no wonder: art is a human expression of how we understand the world. Empathy is essential as an artist. It is also essential to understand art itself.”

Neil Wallace, Programme Director of the de Doelen: “A few years back, Anthony Sargent stood up here, giving a farewell comment on what he had experienced and he said Classical:NEXT was not a forum for business to business, it was a feeling more like a movement, and that term of his came back to me personally more and more as this edition of Classical:NEXT proceeded. I was inspired and made inquisitive in a way I had never been before and I have been feeling stronger and stronger these days, whether it is in the structured debates of the countless thousands of unstructured conversations that we really do something and even if we cant do put a label to that there is something more important than it has ever been and that is Classical:NEXT. If we carry on developing and nurturing this movement, with where we are at this moment with progress, whether in music, or society or even in humanitarian goals, progress is not just possible but it will be inevitable.”