Jörg Widmann

Jörg Widmann, who has served as Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy since 2026, was born in Munich in 1973. A composer, clarinetist, and conductor, he ranks among the most versatile artists of our time. Widmann studied clarinet with Gerd Starke in Munich and with Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York. He studied composition with Kay Westermann, Wilfried Hiller, Hans Werner Henze, Heiner Goebbels, and Wolfgang Rihm. His works have been premiered and are regularly performed by the Berlin, Vienna, and New York Philharmonics, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra. During the 2023-24 season, Widmann served as composer-in-residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker, where, among other works, his Horn Concerto received its world premiere. He previously held the same role at Lucerne Festival in 2009, where he helped shape the program; most recently, The Last Rose of Summer for viola and orchestra received its world premiere at Lucerne in the summer of 2023. As a conductor, Widmann has worked with orchestras from Oslo to Budapest and from Seoul to Cleveland. He is Principal Guest Conductor of the NDR Radio Philharmonic, Associate Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, and Artistic Partner of Sinfonietta Riga. His long-stand­ing chamber music partners include pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and violinists Isabelle Faust and Carolin Widmann. Several works have been dedicated to Widmann, including clarinet concertos by Rihm, Aribert Reimann, Mark Andre, and Olga Neuwirth, whose Zones of Blue he premiered in February with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle. From 2001 to 2015, Widmann taught at the University of Music in Freiburg/Br. He has taught composition at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin since 2017. The recipient of numerous awards, most recently the Hamburg Bach Prize (2023) and the Music Prize of the City of Munich (2021), Widmann was appointed a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 2024.

Lucerne Festival debut on 28 August 2002, performing in a trio with Muriel Cantoreggi and Silke Avenhaus, with whom he played his own works alongside music by Stravinsky, Berg, and Bartók; he most recently conducted here on 16 August 2026, when he led Rihm’s Tutuguri.

May 2026