In Cluj-Napoca, on July 8, 1991, the “Sigismund Toduță” Foundation was established. All 40 founders, 32 of whom were professors at ANMGD (Academy of Music, Gheorghe Dima), decided that the great musical tradition of Cluj should be continued through such valuable heritage initiatives.
In May 1997 and 1998, through this partnership, ANMGD launched the “Sigismund Toduță” Festival series with a generic edition, centered around the International Performance Competition for flute and violin. Five more editions followed (in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2010), with young performers who have fully validated the awards they received to this day.
After 2013, under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Ecaterina Banciu, the “Sigismund Toduță” Festival gained true international recognition. The first edition under this new direction was organized by ANMGD in the now-traditional partnership with the “Sigismund Toduță” Foundation and the “Transylvania” State Philharmonic—institutions in which the celebrated composer (1908-1991) played a decisive role. He was the founder of the Cluj school of composition and Romanian doctoral studies in musicology, and a key supporter of establishing the Philharmonic’s academic choir. This edition expanded to include musicology symposia and master classes, both theoretical and practical, in modern and contemporary music. This tradition was continued through three more remarkable editions in 2015, 2016, and 2018. Today, the organization is led by musicologists Ecaterina Banciu, Gabriel Banciu, Oana Bălan, and Oana Andreica. In 2018, by integrating the 14th edition of the Congress of Musical Semiotics, led by Prof. Dr. Eero Tarasti (International Semiotics Institute), the Festival achieved maximum international reach.
All these Festival and Competition editions, bearing the name of the illustrious composer, have promoted various unpublished or well-known works by Sigismund Toduță through numerous concerts and chamber recitals, and have spurred the publication of others, in the spirit of the mission successively undertaken by generations of Cluj musicians.