Walter Lietha receives Graubünden Culture Prize 2025
Poet, composer, singer and guitarist Walter Lietha has been awarded the Graubünden Culture Prize 2025, endowed with 30,000 francs. The jazz musician Rolf Caflisch receives a recognition prize.
Lietha's politically incisive songs and virtuoso music enriched the attitude to life of three generations, writes the canton of Graubünden. As a publisher and passionate book collector, he "made a significant contribution to the preservation of Graubünden's cultural and artistic history".
Walter Lietha, born in Chur and raised for the most part in Graubünden, has written countless dialect songs as an author, poet, interpreter and critic of the times. In the 1980s, he worked with Max Lässer in the Lietha-Lässer band, which included Corin Curschellas, Joel Reiff, Sal Celli and Pedro Haldemann. Today he is also active as an antiquarian bookseller and director of Calven Verlag in Chur, and has been running his own antiquarian bookshop "Das Narrenschiff" for several years.
The jazz musician Rolf Caflisch receives a recognition award. He is "a virtuoso jazz drummer and a gifted string-puller of jazz in Graubünden". Thanks to him, there is "jazz from and for Chur and Graubünden that shines far beyond the canton". Sponsorship awards go to folk musician Anita Dachauer, performer Livia Rita Heim and pianist, composer, singer and performer Cinzia Regensburger, among others.
