Celebrating 30 Years!
2022 Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival (2022OMF)
Set for August 13–September 9!

Born in 1992 (then as the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto), the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival marks its 30th anniversary this year. This will be the first festival in three years, having been cancelled consecutively in 2020 and 2021. In this milestone anniversary year, the festival will be held for 28 days, from Saturday, August 13, through Friday, September 9. Not only that, after the summer this year, we will hold a special concert in the autumn as well. While prudently implementing measures to prevent transmission of COVID-19, we are preparing to deliver the best in performances to venues in Matsumoto and Nagano Cities.

OMF in 2022 will be stunning!
Dutoit! Okisawa! Nelsons!

Formed with the best musicians from Japan and abroad, the Saito Kinen Orchestra this year will team up with Charles Dutoit, who truly lived to his moniker of “Magician of Sound” in the 2021 streamed concert with accolades from the audience watching from around the world, and Nodoka Okisawa, a rising star who won the 2019 Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors, which is known as the gateway to success for conductors.。

While the performance in the no-audience streamed concert last year had approximately 120 thousand views and was superb, concerts are doubtlessly meant to be performed in venues with live audiences, and Dutoit will return to Matsumoto once more as vindication for 2021. The program will include Toru Takemitsu’s Ceremonial -An Autumn Ode-, which was commissioned for the first year of the festival in 1992 and performed with Festival Director Ozawa, SKO, and Mayumi Miyata (sho), as well as works by Debussy and Stravinsky, which drew out a magnificent performance by SKO, a group of professionals, in the streamed concert. Ms. Miyata will return to play the sho for Ceremonial.

Okisawa will take on the Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro. This production will be directed by the brilliant Laurent Pelly, who in the past directed The Cunning Little Vixen (2008) and L’enfant et les sortilèges and L’heure espagnole (2013). Okisawa is highly acclaimed in recent years for her guest appearances with key orchestras in Japan and anticipation is high for her performance as a conductor of opera. Both orchestra concerts and opera cannot be missed.

And in addition to the summer, we will hold special OMF concerts in the autumn at Matsumoto and Nagano Cities in 2022. For the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival 30th Anniversary Special Concerts to be held on November 25 and 26, the Saito Kinen Orchestra will be conducted by Andris Nelsons, Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Festival Director Ozawa holds special memories for BSO, having been engaged as its music director for 29 years from 1973 to 2002. And Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 is a symphony that Ozawa performed in April 2002 at his final BSO concert before stepping down as music director. We are greatly excited at the thought of the SKO sound resonating under the baton of an international conductor who has deep ties to Ozawa. We will later announce updates with details of the program that will be truly fitting for this anniversary year and invite you to look forward to this.

This announcement is current as of March 15, 2022. We ask for your understanding that content and scale are subject to change depending on the COVID-19 situation ahead.

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