With the Sabancı Foundation as its principal supporter, The Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra was founded by Cem Mansur in 2007. The members, aged between 15 and 22 are chosen by audition from all of Turkey’s conservatoires.
The orchestra has appeared in some of Europe’s most prestigious festivals and concert halls with distinguished soloists such as Murray Perahia. Salvatore Accardo, Shlomo Mintz, Natalia Gutman, Alice Sara-Ott, Stephen Kovacevich and Kristof Barati.
Audiences have witnessed the infectious energy and virtuosity of these musicians at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Sala Santa Cecilia in Rome, Auditorium di Milano, Warsaw Philharmonic, Beethovenfest Bonn, Brucknerhaus in Linz, the Essen and Dortmund Philharmonie, Prague (at both the Smetana Hall and the Rudolfinum), Budapest, Bratislava, Bologna, Florence, the Ravello Festival, Teatro Filarmonico di Verona, Palermo, the Bozar concerts in Brussels among others. A special highlight of the 2025 tour is a concert at the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg.
The orchestra’s concerts have been recorded and broadcast by Bayerischer Rundfunk, Deutsche Welle, ORF, Slovak Radio and ArteTV (a live broadcast from Berlin in 2017)
In the summer of 2014, the young musicians were at the Taormina Festival, for a production of “Tosca” and in January 2015, played performances of “La Boheme” in a production of the Royal Opera House.
Workshops and seminars about music as a social tool have become an integral part of the orchestra’s work. Principal among these is the “Laboratory of Democracy”, where Cem Mansur guides the musicians and audience through a journey demonstrating the structure of an orchestra as the perfect metaphor for learning about co-existence, leadership, self-respect and responsibility.
In the summers of 2010 of 2012, 35 members of the orchestra combined with a similar number of young musicians from Armenia to form the Turkish/Armenian Youth Orchestra, “Music That Unites” with concerts in Istanbul and Berlin. The members of the Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra regularly took part in the Greek/Turkish Youth Orchestra every year.