Reinventing the orchestra

The Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music (MCICM) exists since 2018. It emerged from the idea to start a collaboration between an orchestra and a scientific organisation. Stefan Rosu, director of the philharmonie zuidnederland, initially shared this idea with Luc Soete, then Rector Magnificus of Maastricht University. "I went to him with the observation that the symphony orchestra has built up such strong traditions that it can never reinvent itself. My idea was for researchers to help us renew our orchestra. This had never been done before, and so we would serve as a testing ground for academic and artistic research," Stefan explains. Luc Soete was interested in this plan and discussed it with classical music enthusiast Martin Paul, who was then President of UM.