Gerber Award promotes new music talent
The newly created Fritz Gerber Award honors young, highly talented musicians in the field of contemporary classical music. The inaugural award goes to clarinettist Mariella Bachmann, violinist David Sypniewski and flautist Rafal Zolkos.
Each of the three prize winners will receive CHF 10,000 and a scholarship in the form of participation in this year's Lucerne Festival Academy worth a further CHF 10,000. The prize will be presented on September 6 by Fritz Gerber, Honorary President of the Fritz Gerber Foundation, at the Lucerne Festival in Lucerne this summer.
The Swiss clarinettist Mariella Bachmann (*1988) completed her musical training at the Zurich University of the Arts with Fabio Di Cásola and at the University of Music in Freiburg im Breisgau with Jörg Widmann. Rafal Zolkos was born in Poland in 1987 and studied flute in Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin and at the Zurich University of the Arts with Philippe Racine.
The third prizewinner, violinist David Sypniewski (*1990), originally comes from Toulouse and attended the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne with Lihay Bendayan. He is currently studying for a Master's degree at the Hochschule für Musik Basel, specializing in contemporary music.
The Fritz Gerber Award was established by the Fritz Gerber Foundation and Lucerne Festival at the beginning of 2015. Candidates must have Swiss citizenship or have lived in Switzerland for at least five years. The competition is organized by the Lucerne Festival Academy. The jury is made up of Michael Haefliger, the artistic director of the Lucerne Festival, the composer and conductor Heinz Holliger and lecturers from the Ensemble intercontemporain.
