2023 Fritz Gerber Award
This year’s edition of the Fritz Gerber Award will be presented to three young musicians who will participate in the Lucerne Festival Academy as part of the 2023 Summer Festival: the cellist Elide Sulsenti, the trombonist Romain Nussbaumer, and percussionist Noah Rosen. Since 2015, this prestigious sponsorship prize has been awarded annually to young, highly talented artists. It includes a scholarship valued at CHF 10,000, which enables the winners to participate in the Academy, as well as an additional cash prize of CHF 10,000.
The cellist Elide Sulsenti was born in Catania in 1999. She studied at the Conservatorio di Musica di Cagliari with Oscar Piastrelloni and at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest with Miklos Perenyi, among others. She is currently completing her studies at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in Lugano with Enrico Dinda. Sulsenti has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at numerous festivals, including the Contemporary Cello Week in Turin in 2022. She was a member of the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) in Frankfurt. The percussionist Noah Rosen, who was born in Boston in 1995, also specializes in contemporary music and is a student at the Basel Music Academy with Christian Dierstein and at the Boston Conservatory; in recent years he has taken part in numerous recordings and concerts with the Ensemble Modern. Since 2021, he has also been playing with the Frankfurt-based ensemble Diaphonix, which focuses on multimedia and interdisciplinary performance. The Swiss trombonist Romain Nussbaumer, who was born in 1999 in the canton of Neuchâtel, is currently studying with David Bruchez-Lalli at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He has been engaged as an extra by the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Musikkollegium Winterthur and is active in a wide variety of ensembles, including the Aeria Brass Quintet, the Swiss Symphony Orchestra, and the Balkan klezmer-gypsy band Otrava.
Musicians can apply for the Fritz Gerber Award by answering the open call for applications. The jury consists of Michael Haefliger, Executive and Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival, and the composer and conductor Heinz Holliger. Young artists up to the age of 28 who have Swiss citizenship or have lived in Switzerland for at least three years are eligible to apply.
The Fritz Gerber Foundation for Gifted Young People has been operating since 1999. It sponsors gifted young people in the fields of skilled crafts and trades, culture, and athletics. Support is provided in the form of financial contributions to education, including training and continuing education. Over the past 24 years, the Foundation has supported around 2,650 young people with a total of more than
CHF 31.7 million.
The Lucerne Festival Academy was founded in 2004 by Pierre Boulez together with Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger. Wolfgang Rihm has been the Academy’s Artistic Director since the summer of 2016. Every summer, musicians from all over the world gather to study contemporary scores and modern classics and, together with former students, join to form the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO).