"Bearing this mission in mind, MISA has given 200 performances and welcomed more than 200,000 audience members."

This year MISA will again present concerts by a number of student orchestras, and host young composers' workshops.

"Many young people who participated in or worked at MISA as volunteers have now turned out to be our faithful audience," says Zhou, adding that some have embarked on musical careers, too.

Wu Kaiyuan, a junior student majoring in violin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, is a fan of the MISA festival.

In 2011, he was a violinist in a students' orchestra in Shanghai, which had an opportunity to play at MISA under the baton of maestro conductor Dutoit, who came with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Britain.

Speaking about how the festival influenced him, he says: "I was greatly impressed with the maestro's accurate and sensitive interpretation of the music, and how he inspired our musical imagination."

The experience had a great impact on him and encouraged him to take up music as a career. And since then, he has attended a couple of MISA concerts every year when he flies home for his summer vacation from the United States.

The New York Philharmonic will also be performing at the MISA festival for the fifth year in a row. Its music director Jaap van Zweden will join hands with South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho to present the opening concert on July 2.

In 2015, Cho, 25, became the first South Korean to win the International Chopin Piano Competition.

The SSO will play the closing concert under the baton of its music director Yu Long on July 15.

The program consisting of three concertos by Mozart, Prokofiev and Dvorak will be part of preparations for the orchestra's upcoming global tour in celebration of its 140th anniversary.

The tour will take the SSO to the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, and for the first time, the BBC Proms in Britain.

Speaking about the SSO's upcoming program, Zhou says: "We are honored to be part of the most prestigious music festivals in the world representing symphony music from China.

"And we hope to introduce to audiences all over the world the vision of contemporary Chinese musicians, as well as provide a glimpse of ancient Chinese culture and philosophy."

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