Since its first concert in 1954, the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo - OSESP) has become an inseparable part of São Paulo and Brazilian culture, promoting deep cultural and social transformation. Besides touring Latin America, the United States, Europe and Brazil, it runs a large educational and outreach programme for over 30,000 children and teenagers every season. The orchestra has released over 80 recordings, and its concerts are regularly broadcast on television and radio, as well as the internet. In 2012 Marin Alsop took the post of principal conductor, and in 2013 she was appointed music director. In that same year, the orchestra made its fourth European tour, performing for the first time, and to great acclaim, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Berlin Philharmonie, and the Royal Festival Hall in London. In 2014, to commemorate its 60th anniversary, the OSESP co-commissioned a saxophone concerto by John Adams, and performed it in five Brazilian states. The orchestra performs over a hundred concerts every season for nearly 10,000 subscribers at its own Sala São Paulo, which was chosen in 2015 by The Guardian as one of the ten best concert halls in the world. In 2016 the OSESP appeared at major European Summer festivals, conducted by Marin Alsop, and the 2017 season won several accolades in Brazil. In 2018, began recording a series of CDs dedicated to Brazilian composers, as part of the Brazil in Concert project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in partnership with Naxos. In 2019, OSESP toured China and Hong Kong, being the first professional orchestra of Latin American to perform concerts in these countries, and premiered All Together: A Global Ode to Joy, a project of Carnegie Hall, with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony sung in Portuguese. In 2020, Swiss conductor Thierry Fischer took over as Principal Conductor and Music Director of OSESP, becoming Marin Alsop Conductor of Honor.