Sarah Maria Sun

The soprano Sarah Maria Sun, who was born in 1978 in Hamm, Westphalia, studied with Klesie Kelly in Cologne as well as with Julia Hamari in Stuttgart and subsequently enhanced her training with Darinka Segota and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner. She specialized in contemporary music early on and began her career with the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, of which she was a member from 2007 to 2014. Since then she has been working as a freelance artist and has made guest appearances at renowned international festivals, opera houses, and concert halls. At the Salzburg Easter Festival, for example, she created the double role Elsa/Lohengrin in Sciarrino’s monodrama Lohengrin; she took part in the world premiere of Holliger’s Lunea at Zurich Opera and performed at the Dresden Semperoper as Gwen in Philip Venables’ 4.48 Psychosis. She has appeared at the Berlin and Bavarian Staatsoper companies, the Salzburg Festival, Opéra national de France, Frankfurt Opera, and Theater Basel. In the fall of 2023, she will make her role debut as Berg’s Lulu in Mexico. Sun’s repertoire includes more than 2,000 compositions from the 16th to the 21st centuries, and she has premiered some 400 works. She has worked with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, as well as with Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Musikfabrik, and Ensemble intercontemporain. Her partners on the podium include Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Ingo Metzmacher, Alan Gilbert, Thomas Hengelbrock, Susanna Mälkki, Heinz Holliger, and Peter Rundel. Sun’s discography includes more than 30 CDs, many of which have won awards. Her latest recording, Ruzicka’s Mnemosyne, was released in the fall of 2022. She has had guest professorships in Hanover, Graz, and Lucerne and, since 2022, has taught at the Musikhochschule in Basel. Sarah Maria Sun is also an illustrator and author of children’s books and has published songs with the band Titillating Tofu.

Lucerne Festival debut on 23 August 2015, when she joined with students of the Lucerne Festival Academy to give the world premiere of Heinz Holliger’s À  plume éperdue.

July 2023