SAVE THE DATE
22-25 May 2026
ARTISTS 2026
JÜRG DÄHLER Artistic Director & Viola
ANDREAS NEESER Writer in Residence
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TOMMASO LONQUICH Clarinet
GILLES GRIMAÎTRE Piano
WINTERTHURER STREICHQUARTETT Ensemble
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Writers Treffpunkt Text
JÜRG DÄHLER
Artistic Director & Viola
Born in Zurich, international activity as violinist, violist, pedagogue, and chamber musician as well as organizer and curator of renowned festivals and concert series. Studies with Sándor Végh, Heribert Lauer and Pinchas Zukerman on the violin as well as with Christoph Schiller, Kim Kashkashian and Fjodor Druschinin on the viola. Formative longterm artist encounters with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Heinz Holliger, Brenton Langbein and György Ligeti. After his debut in the Zurich Tonhalle with the world premiere of Daniel Schnyder's viola concerto dedicated to him, he was a guest with many renowned orchestras under conductors such as Giorgio Bernasconi, Douglas Boyd, Friedrich Cerha, Thierry Fischer, Beat Furrer, David Philip Hefti, Heinz Holliger, Brenton Langbein, Petri Sakari, Stefan Sanderling, Heinrich Schiff, Jac van Steen, Marcello Viotti and Thomas Zehetmair. Concert tours as a soloist and chamber musician have regularly taken him to Australia, the US and all over Europe with performances at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Salzburg Festival and the Wiener Festwochen, the City of London Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Venice Biennale and at the Montreux Jazz Festival. From1985-2000 he was a member and Primarius of the legendary Kammermusiker Zurich. In 1993 he co-founded of the Collegium Novum Zurich. Since 1993 he holds the position as principal violist at the Musikkollegium Winterthur and is a member of the Winterthur String Quartet. In 1999 he co-founded the Swiss Chamber Concerts and runs since 2015 the Pentecost Festival at Schloss Brunegg as its artistic director.
He received much international acclaim for his world premiers and first performances of solo and chamber music works - many of which are written and dedicated for him - by composers such as Birtwistle, Blank, Bodman-Rae, Braun, Cerha, Danner, Dayer, Drushinin, Dubugnon, Dusapin, Furrer, Gaudibert, Gervasoni, Haller, Hefti, Henze, Holliger, Jost, Käser, Kelterborn, Kür, Lehmann, Ligeti, Moser, Pärt, Polglase, Racine, Schnyder, Wyttenbach, Vassena and Zimmerlin. He produced over 30 CDs for labels such as ECM, NEOS, Genuin, Accord, Claves, Grammont, Jecklin and Cantando. Currently he teaches at the Kalaidos University and gave master classes at many renowned teaching institutes such as the Conservatorio di Musica "Arrigo Boito" di Parma, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music or the National Academy of Music in Melbourne.
In 2007 he obtained the title “Executive Master in Arts Administration” from the Faculty of Philosophy and Economics at the University of Zurich with summa cum laude. In 2008 he received the Zolliker Art Prize for his artistic work and his services to the Swiss cultural life, and in 2020 he was honoured with the Swiss Music Prize for his dedicated work for the Swiss Chamber Concerts. He plays a violin by Antonio Stradivarius, Cremona 1714, and a viola by Raffaele Fiorini, Bologna 1893.
ANDREAS NEESER
Writer in Residence
Born in 1964 in Schlossrued, Canton of Aargau, Andreas Neeser studied German studies, English studies, and literary criticism at the University of Zurich. From 2003 to 2011, he established and directed the Aargau Literature House. He currently teaches German part-time at the Alte Kantonsschule Aarau, where he also leads the literary gifted program Treffpunkt Text.
His extensive literary work includes novels, short stories, poetry, plays, libretti, and children’s books. He has received numerous awards and honors for his work.
Recent publications include:
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Nachts wird mir wetter, poems, Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck, 2023
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Morgengrauengewässer. Ein Gespräch in literarischen Miniaturen, together with Azizullah Ima, Rotpunktverlag, Zürich, 2025
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Solangs no goht, chunnts guet, short stories, Zytglogge Verlag, Basel, 2025
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THOMAS LOIBL
Actor
Thomas Loibl was born in Brüggen in 1969 and trained as an actor at the Westphalian Drama School in Bochum. He had his first engagement at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus from 1994 to 1996, where he worked with Werner Schroeter, among others. From 1996 to 1998 he was engaged at the Volkstheater in Munich, followed by the Schauspielhaus Zürich (1998) and the Stuttgarter Staatstheater (1998-2000). His greatest successes during these years include Shylock in "Lessing's Dream of Nathan the Wise" (1998/99) and the detective Stader in Musil's "The Enthusiasts" (1999/2000).
From 2001 to 2009, Loibl was a permanent member of the ensemble at the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel in Munich, where he took part in numerous productions of classics and contemporary plays, including Peter Handke's "Das Spiel vom Fragen", Schiller's "Maria Stuart" and Molière's "Der Misanthrop". In 2004, he received the Bavarian Arts Promotion Prize for the Performing Arts and the Kurt Meisel Prize. In 2005, he made a guest appearance at the Salzburg Festival in the role of Oskar in "Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald". From 2006, Thomas Loibl also took on his first smaller television and cinema roles, for example in Nina Grosse's TV crime thriller "Franziska's Sense for Men" (2006) and as a policeman in the Hape Kerkeling comedy "Horst Schlämmer - Isch kandidiere!" (2009). In 2009, Loibl began working as a freelance actor. Since then, he has regularly appeared in front of the camera for cinema and television productions. He played a priest in Marcus O. Rosenmüller's TV two-parter "Gottes mächtige Dienerin" (2011), a Bhagwan confidant in Marcus H. Rosenmüller's culture clash comedy "Sommer in Orange" (2011) and a Nazi local group leader in Franziska Schlotterer's award-winning NS drama "Ende der Schonzeit" (DE/IL 2012).
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However, television became Loibl's main field of activity. In the real-time series "Zeit der Helden" (2013), he had a leading role as a man in his mid-forties going through a midlife crisis, in Aelrun Goette's drama "Im Zweifel" (2015) he plays an inspector who falls in love with a priest, and in "Simon sagt auf Wiedersehen zu seiner Vorhaut" he played a doctor. Loibl also took on guest roles in numerous series such as "Wilsberg", "Marie Brand" and "Unter anderen Umständen". For his role as an aspiring provincial politician in Vivian Naefe's "Spreewaldkrimi: Die Tote im Weiher" (2014), he received a nomination for the German Academy of Television Award. In the hit series "Charité" (2017), he played Bernhard Spinola, the administrative director of the famous clinic, for six episodes.
Loibl also remained very active in the theater. In 2012/13, he first made a guest appearance at the Schauspielhaus Zürich and was a permanent member of the ensemble there in the 2013/14 season. He made a guest appearance at the Residenztheater Munich in 2015 in a new production of "Antonius und Cleopatra"; the following year, he became a permanent member of the ensemble there and was seen as John Proctor in Arthur Miller's "Hexenjagd" (2016/17) and as the trans woman Elvira in Fassbinder's "In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden" (2017). He was again awarded the Kurt Meisel Prize in 2017.
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In the cinema, Thomas Loibl had a very distinctive role in Maren Ade's comedy "Toni Erdmann" (2016), as the smooth superior of Sandra Hüller's main character. He played a leading role as a father in the bitterly angry family portrait "Sommerhäuser" (2017). This was followed by smaller but striking appearances as a mortician in Sönke Wortmann's comedy "Sommerfest" (2017), as a forest ranger in the children's film "Die kleine Hexe" (2018) and as a doctor in the Hape Kerkeling film biopic "Der Junge muss an die frische Luft" (2018).
Loibl's major television roles include a murderous policeman in the "Tatort" episode "Die Pfalz von oben" (2919), an ice-cold gangster in the thriller "Jackpot" (2020) and the husband of the title character in the comedy "Annie - kopfüber ins Leben" (2020). In the highly acclaimed mini-series "Schneller als die Angst" (2021), he had a leading role as a police officer, and in the historical drama "Die Wannseekonferenz" he played the Nazi ministerial director Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger. After a somewhat longer break from cinema, Loibl was part of the main ensemble in Sönke Wortmann's 2022 comedy "Eingeschlossene Gesellschaft", about a group of very different teachers who unexpectedly find themselves confronted by an irritable father in the staff room.
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SOPHIE KLUSSMANN
Soprano
Born in Freiburg / Germany, Sophie Klussmann studied at the music conservatories of Detmold with Thomas Quasthoff and Köln with Klesie Kelly-Moog. Awards include the Mozart Competition Würzburg and the Trude Eiperle Stiftung.She is a versatile concert, opera and recital singer, who is internationally in demand. Her work with conductors such as Vladimir Jurowski, Helmuth Rilling, Ingo Metzmacher, Marek Janowski, Christoph Eschenbach and Marcus Bosch has taken her to some of the most distinguished orchestras of Europe, including both Radio Orchestras of Berlin, the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin, SWR Orchestra, Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich and the Wiener Akademie. In 2023 she performed Verdis Requiem at the Tonhalle of Zurich, Switzerland.
Early in her career, she was member of the opera Halle, singing the leading soprano parts such as Pamina, Nannetta, Dorinda but also Wellgunde and Waldvogel in Wagners Ring. In 2021/22 she sang the leading role of „The merry widow“ by Franz Léhar at the State Theatre of Cottbus.
With the Akademie für alte Musik/Marcus Creed, Collegium 1704/Václav Luks and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century/Daniel Reuß, she worked intensively in the field of ancient music. Together with Lutinist Hopkinson Smith, Sophie Klussmann created a strong renaissance program, which they perform at different international festivals such as Lübeck and Weimar, Germany, Montserat Spain and Bogotá Columbia. Sophie performed and recorded a number of contemporary pieces by composers such as György Kurtág, György Ligeti and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen at venues as MaerzMusikFestival Berlin and Milano Musica. Composers such as Christian Jost and Xavier Dayer wrote pieces for her. Some of them she recorded at the Swiss Radio together with the american pianist Gilles Vonsattel and the violist and director of the Swiss Chamber Soloists.
Her passionate love for chamber music and Lied repertoire brings her frequently to chamber music venues such as Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, Kempten Festival and the Stift Festival Holland. Sophies’s artistic activity is documented on many recordings including, among others, Dixit Dominus/ Händel under Marcus Creed (Harmonia Mundi), first recording of songs by Zemlinsky-student Karl Weigl with Oliver Triendl, piano (Capriccio) and song cycles by Stefano Gervasoni (Cini Forum Venezia). In 2023 her newest CD will appear at Hänssler Classics with Orchestra Songs by Grete von Zieritz.
Since 2023, Sophie Klussmann is professor at the University of Arts Berlin.
TOMMASO LONQUICH
Clarinet
Musician, psychoanalyst and pedagogue, Tommaso Lonquich has been acclaimed by reviewers as a “formidable clarinetist" and praised for his “passion, sumptuous tone, magical finesse and dazzling virtuosity”. He is an Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York and has served as Solo Clarinetist with Denmark-based Ensemble MidtVest for thirteen years. ​ He has appeared on the most renowned stages of five continents (Carnegie Hall, Wigmore, Alice Tully, Suntory, Salle Pleyel) and at major festivals (Lockenhaus, Oxford, Mecklenburg, Pacific, Music@Menlo, La Jolla, Bridgehampton). He has partnered among others with Christian Tetzlaff, Ilya Gringolts, Pekka Kuusisto, David Finckel, Wu Han, Nicolas Altstaedt, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Maximilian Hornung, Anneleen Lenaerts, Yura Lee, Gilles Vonsattel, Juho Pohjonen, Radovan Vlatkovic, as well as with the Danish, Vertavo, Van Kuijk, Noûs, Indaco and Zaïde string quartets. ​ In Denmark, Tommaso Lonquich is the founder and Artistic Director of Schackenborg Musikfest, one of Scandinavia’s most prestigious festivals. Previously he served as Artistic Director of KantorAtelier, a vibrant Florentine cultural space based dedicated to music, theatre, art and psychoanalysis. Particularly active in the field of improvisation, he has led workshops at the Juilliard School and has collaborated with prominent visual artists, dancers and theatre companies. ​
A devoted mentor, Tommaso Lonquich served as the Head of Chamber Music at the Dædalus Advanced Studies Program in Florence, an institution which he co-founded. He has given masterclasses at the Manhattan School of Music, the State University of New York, the Royal Danish Academy, the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, the Utah State University, Shanghai Conservatory, and the Royal Welsh College of Music, among others. His series of lectures “The Listening Voice” has been presented at Conservatories throughout Europe. ​ He performs regularly as a soloist and solo clarinetist with orchestras such as the Haydn Philharmonie (Austria), the Orchestra Leonore (Italy), the Chamber Orchestra of Mantua (Italy) and the Slovenian Radio Orchestra, collaborating with conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fabio Luisi, Adam Fischer, Enrico Onofri and Leonard Slatkin. ​ He can be heard on twenty-five CD releases by CPO, Music@Menlo, NovAntiqua and Brilliant. His recordings have been nominated for a Gramophone Award and for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. ​ Alongside his artistic career, Tommaso Lonquich is a practicing psychoanalyst at the International Center for Lacanian Psychoanalysis, which he founded in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is a lecturer in Theory and Clinic of Lacanian Psychoanalysis and a member of the Scientific Committee at OMANUT in Rome. ​ Tommaso Lonquich is a Gleichweit, Seggelke, ZAC Ligature, and Buffet Crampon Artist and plays historical instruments by Soren Green and Seggelke. ​
The 2025–2026 season will take him to Korea, China, the United States, Australia, and throughout Europe. As a soloist he will perform concertos by Spohr, Mozart, Copland and Lutoslawski.
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IRENE ABRIGO
Violin
Winner of the Respighi Prize 2015, the young violinist made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2016 with the Chamber Orchestra of New York. She performed the violin concerto "Black, White and in Between" by Dirk Brossé as a NY premiere. In 2016, she gave the South American premiere of Respighi's 1st Violin Concerto in Brazil. In the same year, she made her debut with the West Czech Symphony Orchestra in Prague with Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5. After her first violin lessons at the age of four at the Aosta Suzuki School, she studied with Marie-Annick Nicolas in Geneva, with Pierre Amoyal in Lausanne and Salzburg and with Corina Belcea in Bern. She received important influences at master classes with Thomas Füri, Itzhak Rashkovsky, Viktor Pikayzen, Benjamin Schmid, Mayumi Seiler and Zakhar Bron.
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Deeply convinced of the social role and responsibility of the arts, Irene Abrigo founded the POURQUOIPAS association in 2012, which focuses primarily on musical and artistic projects with a conscious social mission. Thanks to a dissertation on Niccolò Paganini, she also holds a doctorate in Art, Literature and Performance (DAMS) from the University of Turin. She has been director of the Lucignano Music Festival (Tuscany, Italy) since 2021. In 2023, under the patronage of the Italian Consulate and the Istituto di Cultura in Zurich, she founded the Italian Swiss Music Society with the aim of bringing the cultural wealth of the two neighboring countries into closer contact and exchange. Irene Abrigo has been leading the violin class for pre-college studies at the Winterthur Conservatory since 2023.
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She plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Milan 1758.
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FRANCESCO SICA
Violin
Francesco Sica was born into a musical family in Sicily. At the age of seven, he began violin lessons at the Conservatory of Catania, completing them with distinction. After pursuing advanced studies with Felice Cusano at the Fiesole Academy, he continued his education at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, where he earned his diploma under Priya Mitchell and subsequently completed the concert examination under Sophia Jaffé. In parallel, he studied chamber music at the Reina Sofia Institute in Madrid with Ralf Gothoni and in Essen with Dirk Mommertz. Francesco regularly performs as a chamber musician and is a member of the Gémeaux Quartet and the Monte Piano Trio. Together with his colleagues, he has appeared in concert halls such as London's Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Conway Hall, Zurich's Tonhalle, and Hamburg's Laeiszhalle. He has also been featured in broadcasts by WDR, SWR, HR, BR, and Deutschlandfunk. Francesco has performed at several renowned festivals, including the Enescu Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Osnabrück Chamber Music Festival, Mozartfest, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Heidelberg Spring, and the Constella Festival in the USA.
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Francesco has recorded two trio CDs released by the GENUIN label, both of which received five-star reviews from the Sunday Times Magazine and Fonoforum. As an orchestral musician, Francesco has worked as Deputy Concertmaster at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. He has also played with the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra and the Hessian Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others. Francesco is the artistic director of the "MusiKulinarium" Chamber Music Festival at Lake Constance. As a soloist, he has won several national and international competitions, including the "Città di Vittorio Veneto." He has been inspired by masterclasses with artists such as Ivry Gitlis, Günter Pichler, Menahem Pressler, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Eberald Feltz, Enrico Dindo, Sergey Girshenko, and Valentin Erben. Since 2023, he has been the principal second violinist of the Musikkollegium Winterthur and a member of the Winterthur String Quartet.
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SOPHIE DRUML
Violin, Piano
The Mittelbayerische Zeitung described the young pianist and violinist Sophie Druml as an “exceptional talent who impresses audiences with her technical mastery and interpretative abilities.” A prizewinner of numerous competitions, she has already appeared as a soloist on four continents. She is currently completing her Bachelor’s degree in piano with Christopher Hinterhuber at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, followed by studies with Jacques Rouvier at the Mozarteum Salzburg. From the age of fourteen onward, repeated encounters with Paul Gulda proved decisive for her artistic development. She has collaborated musically with the aron quartett and with artists such as Christian Altenburger, Matthias Bartolomey, Piotr Beczala, Paul Gulda, Ariane Haering, Veronika Hagen, Igudesman & Joo, Harriet Krijgh, Reinhard Latzko, Julian Rachlin, Michael Schade, Benjamin Schmid, Matthias Schorn, Ramón Vargas, Dominik Wagner, as well as members of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. In October 2020, she made her debut in the Great Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. In 2022 she appeared at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg with tenor Piotr Beczala and at the Tonhalle Düsseldorf. During the 2023/24 season, she performed at the Berlin Philharmonie, in Boston and at Symphony Hall Chicago, with the New York Philharmonic, and in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 2024, her engagements included Melbourne, Brisbane, Auckland, the Sydney Opera House, Stockholm, Amsterdam, the Isarphilharmonie Munich, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai, and Beijing. In 2024 she made her debut at the Liszt Festival Raiding, followed in 2025 by her debut with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra at the Vienna Konzerthaus. She has appeared at festivals such as the Chopin Festival Kartause Gaming, LOISIARTE, Kyoto Music Festival, CLASSIX Kempten, Schloss Walpersdorf, the Megaron Gyzi Festival in Santorini, the International Baroque Days at Melk Abbey, the Stauffer Center for Strings in Cremona, Herbstgold Festival, Klassik in Klagenfurt, International Music Sessions Holland, the Hainburg Haydn Society, Attergau Cultural Summer, Mattsee Diabelli Summer, the Neuberg Cultural Days, and the Upper Austrian Abbey Concert Series.
OLEKSANDRA FEDOSOVA
Violin
Oleksandra Fedosova was born in Poltava, Ukraine. At the age of eight she won her first prizes and awards on two instruments, violin and piano. She initially attended the music school in Poltava, studying violin as her major subject and piano as a secondary subject. At the age of twelve she was admitted to the Lysenko Music School for Gifted Children in Kyiv, where she studied violin with L. Ovcharenko and piano with M. Bogdanova. During her studies there, she was a scholarship holder of the Presidential Foundation.
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She subsequently completed her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Music and Theatre in Munich with Gottfried Schneider, followed by two Master’s degrees in Basel at the Academy of Music and at the Zurich University of the Arts, where she studied with Alexander Sitkovetsky. She attended masterclasses with Anna Chumachenko, Zakhar Bron, and Benjamin Schmid. Throughout her studies she was a prizewinner at more than ten international music competitions. Following successful auditions and competitions, her education was supported by numerous foundations and scholarships, including the Oskar and Vera Foundation, the Gidon Kremer Foundation, Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now, the Hirschmann Scholarship, the Rudolf Moser Foundation, the Walter Fischli Foundation, the Rahn Cultural Fund, the Sinfonima Foundation, and the Marianne and Curt Dienemann Foundation. She has appeared at music festivals such as the Trecastagni International Music Festival, Braunwald Music Week, the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival (by invitation of Gidon Kremer), I Palpiti International LA, the International Contemporary Music Festival Contrasts, Golden Festival, Odessa Classics, Öschberghof Klassik Donaueschingen, the Montepulciano Chamber Music Festival, the Bad Kissingen Music Festival, Young Euro Classic Berlin, Chamber Music Connects the World, and many others. At these festivals she has performed both as a soloist in a wide-ranging repertoire and as a chamber musician alongside distinguished artists including Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff, Roman Patkolo, Thomas Grossenbacher, Oleksiy Botvinov, Lawrence Power, Alexander Sitkovetsky, and Walter Nothas, among others. In 2018 she recorded the CD The Six Seasons as a pianist together with double bassist Roman Patkolo. The album was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK 2018 prize, presented at the Konzerthaus Berlin.
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As an orchestral musician, she has performed with the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Weinberger Chamber Orchestra, and Kremerata Baltica. She has served as concertmaster of the Orff Academy Orchestra at the Munich Radio Orchestra, as second concertmaster of the Zurich Chamber Philharmonic, and has performed with various Baroque orchestras. She has collaborated with conductors and soloists such as Lorin Maazel, Mariss Jansons, Christian Thielemann, Paavo Järvi, Gidon Kremer, Joshua Bell, Ray Chen, Herbert Blomstedt, Midori, Maurizio Pollini, Janine Jansen, and Radu Lupu, among others. As a soloist and orchestral musician, she has appeared in major concert halls including the Philharmonie im Gasteig and the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Kyiv Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Zurich, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the KKL Lucerne, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Shanghai Concert Hall, the Lviv Philharmonic, and the Vilnius Philharmonic.Her concerto appearances with orchestras and her recital programs encompass a broad repertoire ranging from the Baroque period to contemporary music.
JOHANNES ERKES
Viola
Johannes Erkes has been music director of the International Foundation for the Promotion of Culture and Civilization since 2006. As a renowned soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in the most important music capitals of Europe, South America, and Japan. Numerous recordings for Bayerischer Rundfunk, the BBC, WDR, BIS Records, CPO, and Onyx attest to his artistic stature.
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In 1993, he founded the Festivo chamber music festival in Hohenaschau, which is now one of the most important festivals of its kind. Johannes Erkes plays a viola by Gasparo da Saló from 1610. He is a recipient of the Rosenheim District Culture Award and, together with Benjamin Schmid, Dejan Lazić, and Enrico Bronzi, was awarded an Opus Klassik for the best chamber music recording in 2021. (Mozart Piano Quartets)
PATRICK DEMENGA
Cello
Born in 1962, the musician studied at the Bern Conservatory, in Cologne with Boris Pergamenschikow as well as with Harvey Shapiro in New York and is one of today`s most sought after cellists. Patrick Demenga appears regularly at the most renowed festivals and music centres throughout Europe, South Africa, the U.S., Canada, South America, Australia and Asia.
He frequently collaborates with musical personalities such as Heinz Holliger, Mario Venzago, Dennis Russel Davies, Leif Segerstam, Jesus Lopez Cobos, Howard Griffith, Christoph Poppen, Leonidas Kavakos, Alexander Lonquich, Isabelle Faust, Natalia Gutman, and many others, as well as with orchestras like the Zurich Tonhalle Orchester, Symphonieorchester Basel, RSO Vienna, Camerata Bern, Münchner Kammerorchester, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Kremerata Baltica, Ensemble Modern etc. His many radio and television recordings as well as numerous LPs and CDs (Novalis, Accord Musidisc, ECM, Sony Classical), have made him known to the international public. He has premiered works by composers such as Isang Yun, Gerhard Schedl, Heinz Holliger and many others.
Patrick Demenga teaches a concert class at the Lausanne Conservatory and also teaches at diverse international master-classes. For several years, he directed the cello festival Viva Cello in Liestal/Basel. He is artistic director of the Vier Jahreszeiten-Konzerte in Blumenstein near Berne, and of the Musikfestwoche Meiringen. Patrick Demenga obtained the award «Der Goldene Bogen» (Golden bow) in 2001. As a musician, Patrick Demenga is keen to move in the field of tension around great composers – great works and contemporary music. It is precisely in this constellation that he senses the arousal of the musical debate and where he finds his exceptional expressive strength.
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ANIA DRUML
Violin, Piano
Kleine Zeitung has described Ania Druml as a “shooting star of the Austrian music scene.” She is pursuing concert-performance studies in both cello and piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw), where she studies with Reinhard Latzko and Stefan Vladar. Her performances have taken her to China, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, and the United States. She has appeared in leading venues such as the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, and the Great Hall of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, as well as at the Liszt Festival Raiding. Further appearances include festivals and academies such as the Kronberg Academy, the Geneva String Academy, and the Cello Biennale Amsterdam. In 2025, she made her orchestral debut in the United States and her debut with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra at the Vienna Konzerthaus.
BÉLA BLUCHE
Violin, Piano
Béla Bluche began playing electric bass in a rock band before gradually moving toward other musical styles and eventually to the double bass. Highly active on the alternative music scene with his own personal projects, he also collaborates with ensembles from a wide range of musical backgrounds. Béla lives in Germany and occasionally performs with orchestras such as the Orchestre de Paris and Les Dissonances, and during the 2023/2024 season he is a fellow with the Aachen Symphony Orchestra.
GILLES GRIMAÎTRE
Piano
Gilles Grimaître is a pianist, keyboardist, composer, performer, and curator based in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Active in the field of contemporary music, his artistic work places a strong emphasis on collaboration with composers and artists from the visual arts, literature, and the performing arts.He performs throughout Europe and worldwide as a soloist and chamber musician. He is a member of Collegium Novum Zürich and regularly performs with Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Contrechamps, Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain (NEC), the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Camerata Bern, Basel Sinfonietta, the Biel Symphony Orchestra, and Ensemble Proton.
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Together with percussionist Julien Mégroz, he co-founded HYPER DUO, an ensemble dedicated to transcending stylistic boundaries and expanding musical horizons. Their debut album, Indigne de nous, was released in June 2021 on the Everest Records label. Driven by a passion for improvisation and electronic music, he has developed a personal instrumental setup consisting of analog synthesizers and samplers, which he employs both in HYPER DUO and in his own compositions. As a composer, his musical approach combines elegant sound textures and immersive sonic spaces with the exploration of complex structures in an untamed, marginal music aesthetic close to Art Brut.
He studied piano with Pierre Sublet, organ with Pascale Van Coppenolle, and composition with Xavier Dayer at the Bern University of the Arts. During the 2013–2014 academic year, he was a fellow at the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt am Main. He also received instruction from Michel Dalberto, Nicolas Hodges, Florence Millet, Ueli Wiget, Hermann Kretzschmar, and Hideki Nagano.
In 2013, he was awarded First Prize at the Nicati Competition in Bern for the interpretation of contemporary music. In 2022, he received a residency from the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia in South India, where he studied Carnatic music, with a particular focus on Konnakkol, under Vidwan B. R. Somashekar Jois and Vidwan “Ghatam” Dr. S. Karthick.
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STEFAN KÄGI
Piano
Stefan Kägi studied piano with Karl-Andreas Kolly, improvisation with Lucas Niggli, new music with See Siang Wong, jazz piano with Tim Kleinert, and organ with Ursina Caflisch at Zurich University of the Arts. His artistic practice ranges from classical and contemporary music on various keyboard instruments to composition, improvisation, sound and graphic design, creative coding, music engraving, editorial work, song accompaniment, instrument making, performance, and theater.
He has performed at venues including the Tonhalle Zurich, the LAC in Lugano, the Gasteig in Munich, the Kaserne Basel, the Hyperlokal Zurich, and on the Limmat, as well as at festivals such as the Dark Music Days in Reykjavik, Festspiele Zurich, “Platz für andere Musik,” the Zeitfestivals in Zurich and Augsburg, the Domleschger Sommerkonzerte, the far-Festival in Nyon, the #workoutjazz-Madness and the #workoutjazz-Marathon, and the Emser Bachwoche.
At Breitkopf & Härtel, he appeared as co-editor of a new edition of a work by Joachim Raff. Current projects include the Japanese HC techno band Candytoe, for organ and digital oscillators, the duo OHRABLÜATLER, the collective PHON3M, CODENAME Flechtenflöte, “The Reality of Dreams,” “What futures are you longing for?” , “Fibsi and the edge of the abyss”, “undersized empire,” and the duo TASAI. With a grant from the Canton of Zurich, he developed horror instruments. In 2025, he won the “Competition for Professional Cultural Creation” of the Canton of Grisons.
WINTERTHUR STRING QUARTET
Bogdan Božović, Violin
Francesco Sica, Violin
Jürg Dähler, Viola
Sebastian Braun, Cello
Both the history and activities of the Winterthur String Quartet are difficult to compare with other formations of the same genre: The members of the Winterthur String Quartet have always been and still are the section leaders of their register and regular soloists in the Musikkollegium Winterthur orchestra. The existence of an orchestra's own string quartet is a rarity worldwide and testifies to the long tradition in the cultivation of chamber music at the Musikkollegium Winterthur. The quartet, which has initially existed rather loosely since 1873 and is therefore the world's oldest, made a name for itself at home and abroad very early on. In 1920, the Winterthur String Quartet formed as a permanent ensemble with regular concerts in the Winterthur town hall. After the Second World War, with the legendary line-up of Peter Rybar, Clemens Dahinden, Oskar Kromer and Antonio Tusa, concert tours took them to Salzburg and Northern Italy, to Holland, Belgium and Germany, and a considerable number of chamber music works were performed by the American Concert Hall Society recorded on long-playing records. The pianist Clara Haskil was one of the famous guests at the time.
Since its inception, the Winterthur String Quartet has cultivated not only the well-known repertoire but also the unknown and forgotten literature; Many premieres and first performances bear witness to this. Generous patronage continually enables concert programs of rare value, far removed from commercial interests. Recent renowned guests include performers such as Kit Armstrong and Dénes Várjon (piano), Ian Bostridge (tenor), Nicolas Altstaedt (cello) and Albrecht Mayer (oboe). The quartet plays today with Bogdan Božović (1st violin), Francesco Sica (2nd violin), Jürg Dähler (viola) and Cäcilia Chmel (cello). Invitations to other cities in Switzerland, to Germany and the USA, regular appearances at the SWISS CHAMBER CONCERTS and highly acclaimed CD recordings are some of the stops on the path of this renowned ensemble, which celebrated its 100th birthday in the 2020/21 season. To celebrate this anniversary, the Musikkollegium Winterthur edited a CD with live recordings from the past 100 years.
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AZIZULLAH IMA
Writer
Born in 1963 in Kabul, Azizullah Ima studied pedagogy at the Pedagogical University of Kabul. He served as editor-in-chief of the independent daily newspaper DARIZ in Kabul. During the civil war in 1994, Ima was critically injured in a rocket attack by Islamist forces. In 1996, the Taliban took power in Afghanistan. That same year, Ima was forced to leave Afghanistan with his wife and three young children. Since 1999, he has been living with his family in Switzerland.
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He has published novels, short story collections, and poetry in Persian in Afghanistan and Europe. In 2025, his first book in German was published by Rotpunktverlag Zürich: Morgengrauengewässer – ein Gespräch in literarischen Miniaturen, in collaboration with the Swiss writer Andreas Neeser.
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OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK
Writer
Oksana Maksymchuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. Her debut English-language poetry collection Still City was published by University of Pittsburgh Press (US) and Carcanet Press (UK) and was long-listed for 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize and 2025 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Oksana’s poems appeared in The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, PN Review, The Poetry Review, and many other journals. In the Ukrainian, she is the author of poetry collections Xenia and Lovy and a recipient of Antonych and Smoloskyp prizes, two of Ukraine’s top awards for younger poets. With Max Rosochinsky, she co-edited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary poetry. Oksana won first place in the Richmond Lattimore and Joseph Brodsky-Stephen Spender translation competitions and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, Scaglione Prize for Literary Translation from the Modern Language Association of America, Peterson Translated Book Award, and American Association for Ukrainian Studies Translation Prize. She is a co-translator of a few single-author volumes of poetry, including Furious Harvests by Alex Averbuch, The Voices of Babyn Yar by Marianna Kiyanovska, and Apricots of Donbas by Lyuba Yakimchuk. Her work has been featured on BBC Radio 3 & 4, CBC Radio, The Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and TEDx, among others, and her translation of Lyuba Yakimchuk's "Prayer" was performed by the author at the 2022 Grammy Awards Ceremony. Oksana holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University. Most recently, she was a visiting writer in residence at the University of Chicago, University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and the Cheuse Center for International Writers. Born and raised in Lviv, Ukraine, she has also lived in Chicago, Philadelphia, Budapest, Berlin, Warsaw, and Fayetteville, Arkansas. She is currently a Sidney Harman Writer in Residence at Baruch College/CUNY in New York.
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SARA BOTAN
Writer Treffpunkt Text
2009, lives in Lenzburg
Sara Botan is currently in her first year at the Alte Kanti, with a focus on mathematics.
"I have always enjoyed giving free rein to my creativity, and in writing I have found the perfect form of expression. Words allow me to immerse myself in other worlds—writing is like a small adventure in my mind."
SELMA FÄSSLER
Writer Treffpunkt Text
2007, lives in Rombach.
Selma Fässler is currently in her fourth year at the Alte Kanti, with a focus o Latin.
“I have always enjoyed writing. Through stories and poems, I can immerse myself in other worlds, just like when reading. It’s wonderful to work on a text until it feels right and to take the time to put oneself into words.”
NOELIA KÜTTEL
Writer Treffpunkt Text
2006, lives in Gipf-Oberfrick.
Noelia Küttel is currently in her third year at the Alte Kanti, with a focus on visual arts.
“I love traveling, discovering new places, and meeting people. Writing is the same for me: traveling through stories I can shape myself, meeting people who don’t exist, and in doing so opening up a small world of my own. Through writing, I’ve found a new favorite place—a place of inspiration.”
JAKUB KWIATKOWSKI
Writer Treffpunkt Text
2007, lives in Suhr.
Jakub Kwiatkowski is currently in his fourth year at the Alte Kanti Aarau, with a focus on physics and applications of mathematics.
“My love of reading led me to writing. Words fascinate me because they allow thoughts, feelings, and so much more to be abstracted into a sequence of symbols.”
MARTINA PEDERIVA
Writer Treffpunkt Text
Born in 2010 in Italy; has lived in Switzerland for 15 years, currently in Muri.
Martina Pederiva is currently in her first year at the Alte Kanti, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences.
“For me, writing is a very special way of expressing myself and giving language to my feelings.”
VIVIANE PETER
Writer Treffpunkt Text
2009, lives in Erlinsbach SO.
Viviane Peter is currently in her second year at the Alte Kanti, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences.
“I write to entertain myself and others, to express what I have to say, and to put on paper what I think.”
LIVIA REICHART
Writer Treffpunkt Text
2008, lives in Hallwil.
Livia Reichart is currently in her second year at the Alte Kanti, with a focus on Latin.
“Whether laughing about them, crying over them, or despairing because of them—my texts fill me with emotion every single time, giving me clarity and stability in life.”
SOFIYA SCHWEIZER
Writer Treffpunkt Text
Born in 2000 in Smijiv, Ukraine; lives in Zurich.
Sofiya Schweizer completed her Matura at the Alte Kanti in the summer of 2021. She is currently studying Slavic Studies and Film Studies at the University of Zurich.
“It makes me happy to create my own worlds out of fragments of thought, snippets of conversation, and stardust.”
SARA KATARINA TRAILOVIĆ
Writer Treffpunkt Text
Born in 1999, raised in Aarau, lives in Basel.
She completed her Matura in 2018 at the Alte Kanti Aarau. In 2024, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Process Design at HyperWerk. Prior to that, she studied Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts.
She translates and writes fragments and poems.
“Writing fascinates me because it is necessary.”