Aurora Orchestra

Aurora Orchestra is a British chamber orchestra, co-founded in 2004 by conductors Nicholas Collon and Robin Ticciati. The orchestra is based in London, where it is Resident Orchestra at Kings Place and Associate Orchestra at Southbank Centre. The orchestra was also previously Associate Orchestra at LSO St Luke's, and performs regularly at other venues including St George's Bristol, the Colyer-Fergusson Hall in Canterbury, and The Apex in Bury St Edmunds. It has developed a particular reputation for creative programming and concert presentation, including pioneering memorised performance as a regular feature of its artistic output. Since its launch in 2005, it has worked with artists ranging from Ian Bostridge, Brett Dean, Anthony Marwood and Sarah Connolly to Edmund de Waal, Wayne McGregor and Björk.

In 2004, Nicholas Collon, Robin Ticciati and fellow members of the National Youth Orchestra established the orchestra. Aurora Orchestra gave its first public performance in 2005. In March 2011, the Arts Council of Englandincluded Aurora Orchestra in its new "national portfolio" scheme. Aurora, which had not been a "regularly funded organisation" under the council's previous funding scheme, was awarded this support as one of the "smaller adventurous music ensembles".

Aurora Orchestra first appeared at The Proms in family-themed concerts in 2011 and 2012. The orchestra subsequently returned for late-night Proms in 2013 and in 2014, the latter of which featured the premiere of Meldby Benedict Mason. In this and subsequent appearances at The Proms, the orchestra featured classical symphonies performed entirely from memory by the orchestra:
• 2014: Symphony No 40 of Mozart
• 2015: Symphony No 6 of Beethoven
• 2016: Symphony No 41 of Mozart
• 2017: Symphony No 3 of Beethoven
• 2018: Symphony No 9 of Shostakovich
Aurora is thought to be the first professional orchestra worldwide to perform whole symphonies without sheet music as a regular part of its artistic output.

In June 2011, the orchestra's debut album of Nico Muhly's Seeing is Believing was released.[12] The orchestra has also made commercial albums for Warner Classics.

In May 2011, Aurora won the Ensemble category of the annual Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, for calendar year 2010. Wikipedia