Over the space of just a few years the ARC Ensemble (Artists of The Royal Conservatory) has become one of Canada's pre-eminent cultural ambassadors, raising international appreciation of the Royal Conservatory and Canada's rich musical life. Its members are all senior faculty of The Glenn Gould School with guest artists drawn from its most exceptional students and graduates. The ARC Ensemble has performed throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia, and its first two CDs, On the Threshold of Hope and Right Through theBone (devoted respectively to the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Julius Röntgen) were both nominated for Grammy Awards in the "Best Chamber Music Recording" category.

The ARC Ensemble has collaborated with a range of artists: the pianist Leon Fleisher, the novelist Yann Martel, actors Saul Rubinek and R.H.Thompson, and composers Omar Daniel and Vincent Ho. It is playing a leading role in unearthing repertoire ignored due to political changes or shifts in musical fashion, and its work has received unanimous acclaim from the world's cultural press. Its concerts and recordings are meticulously researched and assembled with rich supporting materials and are often augmented by lectures on their musical, political and social context, or included as part of larger-themed festivals. The acclaimed "Music in Exile" series, which explores the music of composers forced to flee Europe during the 1930s, has been presented to huge critical acclaim in Tel Aviv, New York, London, Budapest, and Toronto, and has led to concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington and performances in Rome, Sweden, and Israel. The ensemble's recordings enjoy regular airplay on networks around the world and its concerts have been broadcast on CBC Radio, National Public Radio in the U.S., and on public radio in Poland and Hungary.

Highlights of the 2010 - 2011 season have included performances in New York, Washington (The Kennedy Center) and Amsterdam (The Concertgebouw), but additionally, in March 2011 the Ensemble took its "Music in Exile" series to Israel for a series of concerts and broadcasts in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. This was the most comprehensive incarnation of the project thus far, and the Conservatory's most ambitious cultural project outside of Canada. The ARC Ensemble was delighted to partner with Tel Aviv University and the Buchmann Mehta School of Music, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, Radio Kol Israel and Mishkenot Sha'ananim (the Konrad Adenauer Conference Centre), which hosted an international conference on the music of exile. The Royal Consevatory also mounted the renowned Entartete Musik exhibition – a recreation of the Nazi's 1938 Düsseldorf excoriation of Jewish and "degenerate" composers.

Since the 2010 release of the ARC Ensemble's third recording, Two Roads to Exile (RCA Red Seal), a CD devoted to works by Adolf Busch and Walter Braunfels, the album has received an avalanche of praise from reviewers across North America. Now, Two Roads to Exile has been followed by the release of a short graphic film chronicling Busch's self-imposed exile from Germany in 1933, which is set to his ravishing String Sextet. Honour Bound – The Exile of Adolf Busch, was the product of a $25,000 Bravo! Fact grant and can be viewed here.

James Conlon, Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera and the Ravinia Festival, and a major force in the resuscitation of lost twentieth century repertoire, is the ARC Ensemble's Honorary Chairman.

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