Forward Festival 2024
Every year in November, Lucerne Festival Forward offers contemporary music a platform and gives a voice to the musicians of the younger generation. It all starts out from the idea of using the international network of the Lucerne Festival Academy, which has grown over the years and now comprises more than 1,200 artists, as a collective mastermind. And this is the case in several respects. The concerts are not only prepared and presented by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), our orchestra of excellence for the performance of new and contemporary music. Selected Contemporary Leaders from the Academy network also participate to develop the program as curators. In doing so, they take new approaches to closing the gap between so-called “new music” and the audience: they seek out contact with listeners, experiment with unusual concert formats, focus on lesser-known voices and aesthetic positions with respect to the creation of contemporary music, and purposefully mix nationalities, generations, and genders.
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Lucerne Festival Forward 2024: An Invitation
Come close and move forward together: enter the Peterskapelle in Lucerne’s Old City and the KKL Concert Hall to encounter a fascinating communal experience featuring contemporary music from Ukraine (Anna Korsun) to Russia (Sofia Gubaidulina and Galina Ustovolskaya) and the USA (Katherine Balch, Anthony Braxton, and others). That’s what Lucerne Festival Forward is all about: we want to connect, not divide. We want to bring the audience – and that means you! – right up close to the music and the musicians who perform it. The creative spark gets passed on to you, and your presence in turn inspires the artists. This process creates a special sense of community, which is especially important these days.
Offering four programs, a children’s concert and a sound installation that you can take part in, the fourth edition of the Forward Festival promises exciting adventures in listening. It will once again be curated by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Leaders, selected members of the international network of the Lucerne Festival Academy who, together with other hand-picked musicians, form the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO). In the fall of 2024, the LFCO will perform twice with the incomparable Patricia Kopatchinskaja and will also be joined by Ukrainian singers from the Lucerne-based cultural center Prostir.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja will present the remarkably expressive Violin Concerto by the American Michael Hersch, one of her favorite composers and, together with the Contemporary Leaders, is developing a new staged concert. Titled “Dona nobis pacem,” it will grapple with the experience of violence and war. A Late Night event will present the hypnotic sounds of the legendary Black composer Anthony Braxton and Catherine Lamb, both from the USA, and allow you to sit on the concert stage amid the musicians, gazing back at the auditorium – in the opposite direction to what you normally see. Lucerne Festival Forward invites you to change your perspective and open your ears. We look forward to seeing you!
Responsible for Lucerne Festival Forward: Felix Heri und Mark Sattler
New musical experiences need strong partners with vision. We sincerely thank our Founding Partner for their indispensable commitment!
