Mozart-Ensemble Luzern

The Lucerne Mozart Ensemble was founded by Alois Koch in 1991 as a professional chorus to perform the complete sacred choral music of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart. As the elite vocal ensemble for the Music School and the Jesuitenkirche in Lucerne, it focuses intensively on historically informed performance practice of music from Monteverdi to Mozart. The chorus regularly partners with guest conductors and thus has a close rapport with Andrew Parrott, Simon Standage, and other specialists in 18th-century music. The Mozart Ensemble is moreover also devoted to choral music from the romantic and modern eras, from Franz Schubert and Anton Bruckner to Olivier Messiaen. Along with its regular concerts at the Jesuitenkirche and at LUCERNE FESTIVAL, its singers also appear as guest artists in Berlin, Bern, Basel, Bologna, Dresden, Leipzig, Paris, St. Gallen, and Zurich. The Ensemble has been prepared by Pascal Mayer, who studied choral conducting in his home town of Fribourg as well as in Zurich and who began his singing career with the Vocal Ensemble of Lausanne, the Romande Radio Choir, and the Stuttgart Chamber Choir. Afterwards Paul Sacher entrusted him with leadership of the Basle Chamber Choir. In 1987 he founded the Chamber Choir of the Université de Fribourg, which he continues to lead today. For ten years, between 1987 and 1997, Mayer also served as head of the Chamber Choir in Neuchâtel; in 1995, together with Hansruedi Kämpfen, he cofounded the Swiss Youth Choir. He has additionally been entrusted with two ensembles in Lausanne and in 1996 took over choral preparation for the Opera Festival Avenches. In 2009 Pascal Mayer was appointed artistic director of the Collegium Musicum in Lucerne; he teaches choral conducting at the Lucerne Music School.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on August 26, 1991 in Meyer von Schauensee’s Missa solemnis a tre cori under the baton of Alois Koch.

May 2010