Giuliano Sommerhalder

Trumpet player Giuliano Sommerhalder was born into a family of musicians in 1985 and grew up in Switzerland and Italy. In 2003, a year before completing his schooling, he carried off the second prize at the renowned international music competition of the ARD broadcasting network in Munich and was the joint winner of the Maurice André competition in Paris, after having won other important contests, such as the Prague Spring Festival (2003), the Timofei Dokschitzer Competition in Vilnius (2002), the Concertino Praga (2001) and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory Competition in Moscow (1997). In addition, he was awarded European Culture Prizes in Munich in 1999 and in Berlin in 2002. In 2008 he was accepted into the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme.

Giuliano Sommerhalder studied with Pierluigi Salvi at the Conservatorio „Giuseppe Verdi“ in Como and with Max Sommerhalder at the Detmold College of Music. He also gleaned important stimulus from Maurice André, Eric Aubier, Stephen Burns, Edward Carroll, Hans Gansch, Pierre Thibaud, James Thompson and others.

He played in Claudio Abbado’s Orchestra Mozart in Bologna in 2004, was chosen by Lorin Maazel as solo trumpeter for his Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, and has been solo trumpeter in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly from 2006 until 2011, the year in which he was moved to the same position at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam under Mariss Jansons, where he remained until 2013. He has extensively performed as guest principal trumpet at the Milan Scala and Santa Cecilia Symphony Orchestra in Rome. Since 2016 he is Principal Trumpet at the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Yannick Nézet-Séguin first and currently under Lahav Shani.
Besides his soloistical and orchestral activities, he has been a member of the brass quintet Italian Wonderbrass since 2006 and of the Brass Ensemble of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, RCO Brass, since 2017.

As a soloist on both modern and historical instruments, Giuliano Sommerhalder has appeared throughout Europe, in America, Asia, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, at the Vienna Musikverein and the Cologne Philharmonic Hall (in both venues he played Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto), the Berlin Philharmonie (both the Great and the Chamber Music Halls) and other important venues, at the Lucerne Festival, the City of London Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. He has performed

as a soloist with ensembles such as the Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester of Berlin, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the NDR Philharmonic Orchestra in Hanover, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists, the Basle Chamber Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, and the symphony orchestras of the Czech and Polish broadcasting corporations. In 2015 he performed Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings by Shostakovich, with Martha Argerich and the Symphony Orchestra of Santa Cecilia in Rome under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov.

Giuliano Sommerhalder’s discography includes three solo albums: „Romantic Virtuosity“, a collection of virtuosic masterpieces of the german-russian Romanticism; „Amilcare Ponchielli – Concertos“, dedicated to the great Italian composer Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886); as well as “Vladimir Peskin – Complete Trumpet Music” with this Soviet composer’s enormous compositive output for trumpet and piano (with pianist Kasia Wieczorek). In 2012, the Ponchielli Album was awarded the prestigious ECHO-Klassik Music Prize in the category “Concerto Recording of the Year / 19th Century”. He is also featured in four albums of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, performing J.-S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 and the Christmas Oratorio, among others. On baroque trumpet, he has recorded Johann Friedrich Fasch’s Trumpet Concerto in D Major with the Kammerorchester Basel.

Giuliano Sommerhalder is a highly requested pedagogue throughout the World: Since 2019 he is the trumpet lecturer at the Hochschule der Künste Bern (HKB) and gives a yearly trumpet course at AIMART, Accademia Internazionale di Musica e Arte, in Rome. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the “Girolamo Fantini” International Trumpet Competition, which takes place in downtown Rome every two years since 2017. Furthermore, he is Artistic Advisor and permanent guest professor at the annual Festival Rafael Méndez in Morelia, Mexico.
(Photo: Bruno Bonansea)

Stephan Hodel

Stephan Hodel is a versatile composer, arranger and orchestrator. He has written for ensembles of various kinds, from big band to symphony orchestra. He has also written for theatre/ballet, rock music productions and has composed music for children.

Based in Berne, Switzerland, Stephan is a graduate of the Royal College of Music in London where he completed his postgraduate studies with distinction in Composition with Joseph Horovitz. Also at the RCM he was awarded the Cobbett and Hurlstone Prize for outstanding creative achievement. He studied Jazz Composition and Arranging at Berklee College of Music in Boston and holds a MA in Conducting and Music Education from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Lucerne.

Two of Stephan’s orchestral songs, written for soprano Katerina Mina, have been recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Grzegroz Nowak and appear on Katerina’s debut album Angel of Fire. His orchestral work PC-24, ein musikalischer Alpenflug was commissioned by the Festival Strings Lucerne and celebrates the launch of a new aircraft.
Further highlights include a ballet score for the English National Ballet Choreographics at the Barbican, Sinfonische Stubete, a piece for clarinet ensemble at

Tonhalle Zürich, a showcase of the musical The Happy Hypocrite in London and Oxford, the music for the theatrical show Romeo and Juliet de Buenos Aires (Cockpit Theatre, London) a concert with his music at Beijing Concert Hall with the Dunshan Symphonic Wind Orchestra and the concert series The Power of Musick (featuring rapper Greis) at KKL Luzern.

As an orchestrator he worked on films such as Albatross (with Julia Ormond, Felicity Jones and Sebastian Koch), Above&Beyond: The Craftsman and the Swiss sci-fi film Cargo. His collaboration with the rock band Dada Ante Portas has been awarded with a Gold Record for the album Seasons Change.

Teaching activities include a jazz workshop at Morley College, orchestration for wind band at Bern University of the Arts (HKB), and music theory at the University of Teachers Education Lucerne. In theatre he worked with the London Bubble Theatre Company, the Harbinger Company and also held the position of MD for the production of Sugar – some like it hot! at the Luzerner Theater.
(Photo: Dennis Yulov)