The Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto is an annual summer festival in the Japanese Alps. It has earned international acclaim and assembles some of the classical music world’s most prominent artists.
The Saito Kinen Orchestra was initially founded in 1984 on the ten-year anniversary of the passing of Hideo Saito, whom Seiji Ozawa studied under, to hold a memorial concert. The success of the orchestra led in September 1992 to the founding of Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto in Nagano's Matsumoto City, guided every year by Festival Director Seiji Ozawa, based around the two fundamentals of orchestral music and opera.
