Radio 3 - New Generation Artists

Giuliano Sommerhalder (2008-2010)

Giuliano Sommerhalder.

Biography

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1985 and raised in Italy, Giuliano Sommerhalder started playing trumpet at the age of seven. A year before graduating from secondary school, he carried off the second prize at the prestigious A.R.D. International Music Competition in Munich, after having won other renowned contests, such as the 5th City of Paris Maurice André Competition, the 55th 'Prague Spring', the 1st Timofei Dokshitzer Competition in Vilnius, the 36th 'Concertino Praga' and the 2nd International Trumpet Competition of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He received European Cultural Awards in Munich (1999) and Berlin (2002). He has been a student of his father, Max Sommerhalder, at the Hochschule für Musik in Detmold, Germany. Simultaneously, he studied with Pierluigi Salvi at the Conservatorio 'Giuseppe Verdi' in Como, Italy, graduating cum laude in 2005. He benefited from further training with Maurice André, Stephen Burns, Edward Carroll, Hans Gansch, James Thompson, and many others.

In 2006, Giuliano Sommerhalder was appointed principal trumpet of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. As a soloist, he has performed in Asia, in America and throughout Europe, at the Vienna Musikverein (where he played Bach's 2nd Brandenburg Concerto), the Berlin Philharmonie and other important venues, with orchestras such as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Hamburg N.D.R. Symphony Orchestra, the chamber orchestras of Munich, Zurich and Lithuania, the Moscow Soloists, the M.D.R. Symphony Orchestra of Leipzig, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Saarbruecken. His U.S. debut with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra earned him a standing ovation.

He is supported by the British BBC with its New Generation Programme and will perform in 2009 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra working together with Jiri Behlolavek and the BBC Scottish Symphony. In 2008 he performed at the renowned international Luzern Festival.

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