Swiss composer Dieter Ammann is one of the leading composers of his generation and a regular guest at Lucerne Festival, including as a co-lecturer in Wolfgang Rihm's Composer Seminar. Initially, he wasa for many years active as a jazz musician, and a great sense of spontaneity and energy likewise characterize his compositions, as for example his piano concerto "Gran Toccata," which was premiered at the BBC Proms in 2019 and has been an international success. We visited Dieter Ammann at home in Zofingen and asked him the following questions:

The New York Times calls the JACK Quartet "our leading new-music foursome." Its original four members became acquainted at the Lucerne Festival Academy, and the JACKs have been closely associated with the Festival ever since, regularly returning to Lucerne as guests and coaches. The Quartet is especially dedicated to new music, about which it has much to say. In this series members of the Quartet talk about:

German conductor Johanna Malangré was a Conducting Fellow at the Lucerne Festival Academy in 2017, where she worked with artists such as Heinz Holliger and Patricia Kopatchinskaja. She has also completed master classes with Bernard Haitink, Paavo Järvi, Reinhard Goebel, and Nicolas Pasquet, leads the Hidalgo Festival Orchestra in Munich, and will take up her post as Principal Conductor of the Orchestre National de Picardie in 2022. This summer, she returns to Lucerne as Assistant Conductor for the Roche Young Commissions. We talked to Johanna about conducting, "going crazy," and her approach to new music.