MusicAteneo 2025: Nine Concerts for a World Tour through Music

The countdown is on for the debut of MusicAteneo 2025, the international festival of university orchestras and choirs held every spring by the Collegium Musicum. From 6 April to 7 July, the festival will bring nine concerts to the city, offering audience a true world tour through music.

Now in its 33rd edition, this year’s festival will be marked by collaborations, in keeping with the Collegium Musicum’s founding spirit. The performances by guest ensembles from across Europe and the United States will offer young musicians from different backgrounds the chance to connect through their shared passion for music.

Choirs from Utah, Durham, and Warsaw will take the stage alongside the Collegium Musicum’s own choral ensembles. A major new feature this year is the inclusion of two wind bands: the Wind Orchestra of the Catholic University of Leuven—whose seventy members are in Italy to compete in the prestigious international contest Il Flicorno d’Oro—and the lively band from BOKU University in Vienna. These two groups will be joined by the University Philharmonic Ensemble, the Collegium Musicum’s own newly formed yet already well-established band. Also featured in the programme are a performance by the Giessen University Orchestra and the festival debut of the Collegium Musicum’s new String Ensemble.

The event will open on Sunday 6 April at 9 pm at the Basilica of San Giacomo Maggiore (Via Zamboni 15, Bologna) with a concert by the Collegium Musicum Orchestra and Choir. The programme features two works which, a century apart and in different ways, convey the profound themes of the Easter liturgy: Vivaldi’s Sinfonia al Santo Sepolcro and Donizetti’s Miserere in D minor—a foray into the symphonic-choral repertoire of a composer best known for his operatic output. The concert will be enriched by soloists Anna Maria Sarra and Marco Bussi, under the baton of Enrico Lombardi.

Dejan Bogdanovic, who collaborates with the music school Inno alla Gioia, will also be the soloist in Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in the concert organised by the Collegium Musicum Orchestra in collaboration with the school, conducted by Alissia Venier. The concert will conclude with Schubert’s famous Unfinished Symphony.