About

The Zagreb Festival Orchestra was founded in 1989, comprised of the top classical performers in Croatia and formed with the intent to record a single album. That intent was fulfilled with OVERTURES, a record of composer Gioachino Rossini’s greatest operatic works conducted by the acclaimed maestro Michael Halász, a resident conductor at the Vienna State Opera for 20 years, and produced by six-time GRAMMY Award winner Martin Sauer.

The album went on to worldwide commercial success, with its music featured in major Hollywood movies over the span of the decades, but the orchestra itself was never heard from again.

Until 2018. Nearly 30 years later, the Zagreb Festival Orchestra was reestablished as a recording and performing ensemble by the American music company PARMA Recordings and its CEO Bob Lord, featuring an all-star roster of handpicked musicians from the capital city and beyond. The orchestra’s first recorded appearance since its re-emergence, the contemporary music collection PRISMA 2 on the Navona Records label, was released in 2019.