Founded in 2011 by conductor Claire Gibault, the Paris Mozart Orchestra (PMO) is a committed, daring and united artistic collective. With demanding and innovative musical programmes, it champions classical music, contemporary creation and the decompartmentalisation of the arts in a spirit of openness and sharing.

Attentive to all audiences, explorers of new horizons, we are an orchestra with a difference.

The PMO performs just as naturally in prestigious concert halls - the Philharmonie de Paris, the Auditorium national de Lyon, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven - as in prisons, hospitals, shelters or school canteens.

Being a musician at the PMO is not just about taking part in a musical adventure; it is also about sharing strong human values. We believe that artistic and aesthetic choices are inseparable from a strong and assumed societal commitment. True to our commitment, we reach out to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, prisoners, refugees, and vulnerable or excluded people, through concerts, meetings or collaborative workshops.

Showcasing the orchestra's excellent musicians – all of whom are also soloists or chamber musicians – is at the heart of our artistic and human project. In the same way, we adopt gender parity in the soloist positions at each of our concerts and are attentive to greater inclusion of diversity.

In addition to regular collaborations with leading artists such as soprano Véronique Gens and pianist Maria João Pires, the PMO takes pleasure each season in performing with exceptional young talents such as pianists Isata Kanneh-Mason, Adam Laloum and Nathalia Milstein and mezzo-soprano Victoire Bunel.

Strongly committed to gender equality in the world of classical music, the PMO and its musical director Claire Gibault have created, in partnership with the Philharmonie de Paris, the La Maestra International Competition and Academy for Women Conductors, the third edition of which will be held in Paris in March 2024. In this context, the PMO participates in numerous events and concerts in support of the new generation of female conductors, in France and internationally.

In recent seasons, the PMO has performed at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Stresa Festival (Italy), the French May Festival (Hong Kong), the Folle Journée de Nantes and in the regions, the Easter Festival in Aix-en-Provence, and the Cathedral of Le Mans. In 2021-2022, the PMO's 10th anniversary season, the orchestra performed on a 10-day tour in Mexico (Cervantino Festival), as well as at the Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven, de Doelen Rotterdam, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Auditorium of Polish Radio, the Auditorium of Lyon, and during 2 ‘Diversità’ concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris.

In 2023-2024, the PMO is starting the second season of its artistic residency in Bourges and the Centre-Val de Loire region with concerts and public rehearsals at the Maison de la Culture de Bourges, masterclasses at the Conservatoire, the deployment of its Orchestre Au Bahut educational programme in primary, secondary and high schools in Bourges and the Cher region, charitable work at the psychiatric hospital and in retirement homes, as well as a new partnership with the Cher prison service. Other projects for the season include the 3rd edition of the La Maestra Competition at the Philharmonie de Paris, concerts at the Berlioz Festival, the Cité de la Musique – Philharmonie de Paris and the Invalides, and a major educational project around the Cultural Olympiads in Île-de-France and Centre-Val de Loire.

Ardent advocates of contemporary music and the ‘mélologue’ genre, the PMO commissions a multidisciplinary work each year from composers from such diverse backgrounds as Graciane Finzi, Fabio Vacchi, Silvia Colasanti, Édith Canat de Chizy, Philippe Hersant, Alexandra Grimal and Benoît Menut, thus contributing to the emergence of a new repertoire aimed at both an audience of connoisseurs and pupils at primary schools, secondary schools and high schools that are partners of Orchestre Au Bahut – the artistic and cultural education programme of the PMO, winner of the 2016 ‘La France S'Engage’ award. In 2023-2024, the young composer Manon Lepauvre is the composer in residence of the PMO.

With her first CD, Soudain dans la forêt profonde, the PMO has immersed itself with delight and fervour in the worlds of composer Fabio Vacchi and novelist Amos Oz. The double album Pictures of America (Sony Classical, 2016), both a free rein given to soprano and actress Natalie Dessay and a true immersion in the work of American realist painter Edward Hopper, combines Graciane Finzi's melologue and Samuel Barber's Adagio with jazz standards and musicals revisited by Baptiste Trotignon and Cyrille Lehn. In 2018, a favourite of the cartoonist Sandrine Revel (Artemisia Prize 2016) gave rise to the publication of the graphic novel Pygmalion (Les Arènes), revisiting Jean-Jacques Rousseau's prose and Georg Benda's music with a pinch of feminism. In October 2022, the PMO published the first episode of its podcast ‘hear the smile’, devoted to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with Carjez Gerretsen, principal clarinet of the orchestra.