Lucerne Festival presents the Fritz Gerber Award 2022
This year's Fritz Gerber Award goes to percussionist Elliott James Harrison, cellist Charlotte Elise Lorenz and pianist Yilan Zhao. The prize has been awarded annually to young, highly talented musicians since 2015.
The pianist Yilan Zhao, born in 1995 in Hunan Province in southern China, completed her bachelor's degree at the Juilliard School in New York with Hung-Kuan Chen, Robert D. Levin and Matti Raekallio, among others. She has been studying with Konstantin Scherbakov at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2018.
Cellist Charlotte Elise Lorenz, born in 1994, studied for a Bachelor's degree with Francis Gouton in Trossingen and continued her studies with Christian Poltéra at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts - Music, graduating in 2019 with a Master of Arts in Music with a focus on classical performance and in 2022 with a Master in Interpretation in Contemporary Music.
Born in Toronto in 1993, percussionist Elliott James Harrison completed a Master's degree in Percussion Performance at McGill University in Montreal in 2017 and a Master's degree in Pedagogy at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel in 2019. He also attended a Master's in Contemporary Music at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent.
The Fritz Gerber Foundation for gifted young people has been active since 1999. It supports talented young people in the fields of crafts, culture and sport. Support is provided in the form of financial contributions for education, further education and training. In the last 23 years, the foundation has supported over 2500 young people with more than 30 million Swiss francs.
The prize has been awarded annually to young, highly talented musicians since 2015. It includes a scholarship for participation in the Lucerne Festival Academy worth CHF 10,000 and additional prize money of CHF 10,000. Applications are made via an open call, and recommendations are also accepted. This year's jury consisted of Michael Haefliger, Director of the Lucerne Festival, composer and conductor Heinz Holliger and Felix Heri, Director of Lucerne Festival Contemporary.
