A Portrait

The Lucerne Festival Academy is a school for new music and a laboratory for the future. Every summer, some 100 talented young musicians from all over the world are given the opportunity to concentrate on a repertoire that is still too much overlooked in the classical music business: the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Through daily rehearsals and workshops over a three-week period, they immerse themselves in key selected works of Modernism; work on and rehearse brand-new scores that are often written especially for the Academy; and experiment with innovative forms of performance. The Festival audience in turn benefits from unconventional programs that teem with discoveries and offer amazing listening experiences.

This unique campus for contemporary music was founded in 2004 by the French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez and the Festival’s Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger. The German composer Wolfgang Rihm, who died in July 2024, had served as its Artistic Director since 2016. The programs for the 2025 Academy were developed under his leadership. The teaching faculty comprises the Contemporary Leaders from our international Academy Network, as well as leading performers of contemporary music. Moreover, a sumner of additional renowned conductors, composers, and soloists are invited every summer, including such figures as Sir George Benjamin, Peter Eötvös, Isabelle Faust, Heinz Holliger, Susanna Mälkki, Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Sir Simon Rattle. Following an intensive rehearsal process, the works of the summer repertoire are then presented to the public in concerts by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), in which all of the students participate, as well as in various ensemble programs.

It is not only instrumentalists who benefit from the Lucerne Festival Academy’s praxis-oriented training, but conductors and composers as well. In the Contemporary-Conducting Program, young conductors observe and follow along during the Academy’s rehearsal process and additionally gain important experience through a master class. The Composer Seminar in turn gives young composers an opportunity to discuss their works with Dieter Ammann and Unsuk Chin and to rehearse and premiere their works. Finally, the "Roche Young Commissions" series extends commissions to young composers to write new works.