Zurich Festival Prize 2016 goes to Sophie Hunger
Swiss singer, songwriter, film composer and lyricist Sophie Hunger has been awarded the 2016 Zurich Festival Prize, which is endowed with CHF 50,000.
The Artistic Commission of the Zurich Festival is awarding the prize, made possible by the Bär-Kaelin Fund, for the tenth time. Barbara Frey, member of the commission and director of the Schauspielhaus Zurich, characterizes the singer as a "great, sensitive artist" whose music is characterized by a "highly individual mixture of playfulness, concentrated power, wit and melancholy".
The prize recognizes "Sophie Hunger's outstanding achievements in the Zurich music scene and far beyond". The Zurich native, who now lives in Berlin, took her first steps into the music world from here. The Zurich music club Helsinki, one of the first clubs in Zurich to offer live bands every night, was particularly important.
The award ceremony will take place as part of the twentieth Zurich Festival, which will follow in the footsteps of the Dada myth from June 3 to 26, 2016, one hundred years after the Dada movement was founded. At the event at Schauspielhaus Zurich, Sophie Hunger will give a musical and multimedia retrospective of her musical career.
