The musicians of the New Millennium Orchestra of Chicago are as versatile as they are virtuosic, bringing passion and a sense of adventure to the concert experience. The orchestra, led by conductor Francesco Milioto, boasts a repertoire that ranges from traditional and contemporary masterworks of classical and popular music to genre-bending forays into live remixes, improvisations, world music, and multi-media performances.

Hailed by Time Out Chicago as “one of the best additions to the city’s scene,” the New Millennium Orchestra has appeared at Orchestra Hall, the Ravinia Festival, the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, the 2010 Sonar:Chicago Festival, the 2008 Museum of Modern Ice in Millennium Park, and Chicago’s Looptopia festival, and has been a Performing Partner at the Chicago Cultural Center since 2005. Featured collaborators have included members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Grammy-award winning group eighth blackbird, DJ Spooky, Michael Kang of String Cheese Incident, saxophonist and composer Greg Ward, The Flashbulb, the garage-girl group Hollows, and the Grammy-nominated rapper Lupe Fiasco.

The ensemble is especially noted for its engaging children’s concerts, appearing on the Kraft Kids Series at Ravinia and the Family Series at the Harris Theater. Its popular DJ Beethoven concert introduces children to a year in the life of the orchestra, with a program that includes a Beethoven Symphony, opera arias, the sounds of Bollywood, and brings the house down with jazz band, string orchestra, and turntablist coming together for Greg Ward’s jazz-funk Adrenaline.

The 2012 season boasts two full-orchestra debuts for the New Millennium Orchestra: on February 23rd, the NMO will appear at the Harris Theater to perform CSO composer in residence Mason Bates’ “Mothership”, Concert Artists Guild winner Claire Chase in Saariaho’s concerto for flute and orchestra, “L’aile du songe”, and Brahms’ unforgettable 4th Symphony. In the summer, the orchestra will co-produce Viktor Ullmann’s one-act opera “Der Kaiser Von Atlantis,” written while the composer was displaced by the Nazis during the holocaust.