Myanmar National Symphony Orchestra

Founded in 2001, the state-owned Yangon-based orchestra was allowed to give just one public concert of classical music in its first ten years of existence.

After former Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt, the orchestra's principal founding supporter, was freed from house arrest, the ban was lifted in January 2012.

Plans to found a symphony orchestra in Myanmar went back to the early 1960s when a group of musicians were sent to study western classical music in the Soviet Union.

About four decades later, in September 2001, with the support of Gen. Khin Nyunt, then a ranking member of the ruling military junta, the country's first symphony orchestra was founded.

[2] The only reprieve was in 2007 when the orchestra was allowed to give its first public concert after a successful plea to the government by a group of musicians from Europe.

After a period of intensive training, the orchestra finally held its first public concert at the National Theatre in Yangon on 1 April 2007, playing the music of Haydn.