The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra serves as the resident ensemble of the Mostly Mozart Festival, which is held annually in July and August for a period of about four weeks. Other orchestras, chamber groups, and dance companies also perform during the festival, but the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra plays in the vast majority of concerts. Most of the approximately 42 musicians in the MMFO are members of other orchestras or chamber groups, or are soloists and recitalists who regularly tour. Some members function in all three of these roles and many are teachers, as well. The MMFO performs in Avery Fisher Hall and often goes on tour to other summer music festivals, such as the Tanglewood and Ravinia festivals, as well as to such far-off events as the Tokyo-based Bunkamura Festival. While most of the Mostly Mozart Festival repertory is by Mozart, a fair number of concerts feature music by his contemporaries and predecessors, as well as composers of subsequent generations influenced by Mozart. The MMFO has made a number of recordings over the years, mostly available from Delos, RCA, and Sony. Though the Mostly Mozart Festival was established in 1966 -- initially under the name Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival -- the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra was not founded until 1973. It is a period-instrument ensemble that has afforded many New York debuts to a long list of conductors, including Charles Dutoit, Edo de Waart, Leonard Slatkin, and David Zinman. From its early years the orchestra has drawn praise from both critics and public alike. Among its first recordings were the overtures to Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte, led by the dynamic Antonia Brico, the pioneering conductor's only purely orchestral recordings. From the early '80s the orchestra, along with the festival, grew in stature, not least because of the ensemble's gifted music director, Gerard Schwarz. Known also for his work with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Schwarz led the MMFO from 1982-2001. Both he and the ensemble became familiar to television audiences via numerous broadcast concerts on the PBS series Live From Lincoln Center. Since 2002 the MMFO has been led by French-born conductor Louis Langrée. Under his direction the orchestra has continued to flourish, both in concert and on the airwaves. An acclaimed 2009 Live From Lincoln Center concert featured, among other works, Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture and Violin Concerto, with violinist Joshua Bell as soloist, with Langrée conducting.