Coldplay perform at Glastonbury as Baltic Sea Philharmonic plays from memory

The Baltic Sea Philharmonic will close the festival on Sept. 8 with a program led by Robert Treviño and featuring Slovenian violinist Lana Trotovšek. The orchestra will perform works by Max Bruch, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Jean Sibelius at Ljubljana's Cankarjev dom.

What makes the ensemble unusual is that its musicians perform from memory rather than looking at their scores. Its origins date to a 2007 pilot project at a music festival on the Baltic island of Usedom, which is divided between Germany and Poland. The project brought together young musicians from the Baltic region and became the basis for the orchestra formed the following year.

Today, the ensemble brings together musicians from 10 Baltic and Nordic countries. Since 2013, its educational work has operated through the Baltic Sea Music Education Foundation, including mentoring, school performances, exchanges between generations and innovative concert formats. The orchestra describes itself as more than an orchestra, calling itself “a community in motion, a culture of co-creation and one of the most inspiring ensembles on today's music scene.”

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A community in motion, a culture of co-creation and one of the most inspiring ensembles on today's music scene.

Its projects have taken it to cultural capitals around the world and combined music with visual and technological elements. They include the 2019 large-scale co-production Divine Geometry, a 2022 performance alongside the New York Philharmonic at the Usedom festival, and an appearance with Coldplay at Glastonbury two years later before an audience of 200,000.

Treviño, who will conduct in Ljubljana, is an American of Mexican heritage born in 1984 and raised in Texas. He is the principal guest conductor of the Italian Radio Television National Symphony Orchestra and will become chief conductor of the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra in Bucharest. He has said that he first encountered classical music at age eight, when he heard Mozart's Requiem on the radio while riding in his father's pickup truck: “Whatever this is, this is what I want to do.”

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Whatever this is, this is what I want to do.