Founded in 2011 by conductor Claire Gibault, the Paris Mozart Orchestra (PMO) is a unique artistic enterprise – committed, daring and unanimous in its sense of purpose. Through challenging and innovative programming, commissioning and outreach, the PMO champions both classical and contemporary music while advancing the appeal and accessibility of all the arts in a generous spirit of open-hearted partnership.
Boldly exploring every new horizon, profoundly engaged and alive to every audience, the PMO is an orchestra like no other.
Alongside their performances at such prestigious international concert halls as the Philharmonie de Paris, Auditorium National de Lyon, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, the PMO and Claire Gibault are equally at home in prisons, hospitals and schools.
To be a member of the orchestra is not only to participate in an exciting musical adventure; it is a way to share in and champion the strongest of humanitarian values, reaching out to the very young, the underprivileged and the alienated. Every year some 50% of the PMO’s activities are devoted to educational or social projects. Meaningful artistic choices are inseparable from a strong social commitment.
Showcasing the talents of the outstanding musicians of the PMO – each of them a soloist or chamber music player – lies at the very heart of the project. And the PMO strives to maintain an equal number of women in principal positions, visibly promoting, encouraging and exemplifying greater inclusion and diversity.
The orchestra collaborates both with world-class artists – most recently soprano Véronique Gens and pianist Maria João Pires – and with such outstanding young soloists as pianists Isata Kanneh-Mason, Adam Laloum, Nathalia Milstein, or Arielle Beck, and mezzo soprano Victoire Bunel.
Deeply committed to gender equality in the world of classical music, the PMO and its musical director, Claire Gibault, founded the La Maestra International Competition and Academy for Women Conductors in partnership with the Philharmonie de Paris. The 4th edition of the competition will take place in Paris in February 2026. As part of this initiative, the PMO actively engages in numerous projects and concerts supporting the new generation of women conductors, both in France and internationally.
In recent seasons the orchestra has performed at the Philharmonie de Paris, Stresa Festival (Italy), French May Arts Festival (Hong Kong), Folle Journée de Nantes, Festival de Pâques in Aix-en-Provence, Festival Berlioz in La Côte-Saint-André, the Cervantino Festival in Mexico and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.
In 2024/25 the PMO begins the third season of its artistic residency in Bourges and throughout the Centre-Val de Loire region with a series of concerts and open rehearsals at the Maison de la Culture de Bourges, masterclasses at the Conservatoire, the PMO’s “Orchestre Au Bahut” educational program deployed in a dozen schools and high schools, projects at the city’s psychiatric hospital and nursing homes but also with the creation of a third-place dedicated to Art, Cultures & Mental Health, in partnership with the Georges Sand Psychiatric Hospital, as part of Bourges European Capital of Culture 2028.
Other highlights this season include include concerts at the Cité de la Musique – Philharmonie de Paris, the Maison de la Culture de Bourges, and the Scène Nationale du Mans – Les Quinconces and L’Espal.
A powerful advocate of contemporary music, PMO artistic director Claire Gibault commissions each season a new multimedia melologue from a distinguished composer (so far Fabio Vacchi, Silvia Colasanti, Graciane Finzi, Édith Canat de Chizy, Philippe Hersant, Alexandra Grimal, Benoît Menut, Manon Lepauvre…) creating and expanding a unique, original and highly evocative repertory designed as much to enthral today’s music lovers and concert goers as to inspire and challenge the young participants in the orchestra’s award-winning educational arts and culture project “Orchestre Au Bahut”, a laureate of “La France S’Engage”. In 2024/25 the young composer Orlando Bass is the composer in residence at the PMO.
With its first CD, Soudain dans la forêt profonde, the PMO passionately immersed itself in the worlds of composer Fabio Vacchi and novelist Amos Oz. The double album Pictures of America (Sony Classical, 2016) is both a carte blanche for soprano and actress Natalie Dessay and a deep dive into the work of American realist painter Edward Hopper. It blends Graciane Finzi’s melodrama and Samuel Barber’s Adagio with jazz standards and musical theater classics reimagined by Baptiste Trotignon and Cyrille Lehn. In 2018, a special admiration for illustrator Sandrine Revel (Prix Artemisia 2016) led to the publication of the graphic novel with music Pygmalion (Les Arènes Editions), which reinterprets Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s prose and Georg Benda’s music with a feminist touch.
In October 2022, the PMO released the first episode of its podcast hear the smile, dedicated to Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, featuring Carjez Gerretsen, the orchestra’s principal clarinetist.