Lecturers Academy for contemporary Music

Tora Augestad, mezzo-soprano
Born in Bergen in 1979, the singer and actress studied both classical music and jazz singing and has since devoted herself to the repertoire of Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Luciano Berio, Arnold Schönberg and contemporary composers. She has given concerts with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Ensemble Modern, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and the Klangforum Wien, as well as with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, which also devoted a whole portrait CD recording to her.
Her collaboration with the Swiss director Christoph Marthaler, which began in 2010 with the world premiere of Beat Furrer's Wüstenbuch in Basel, has become a constant element in her artistic life. She has been a global guest with his productions and made her debut at the Ruhrtriennale in 2018 with the large-scale work Universe, Incomplete - a tribute to Charles Ives. At the beginning of the 2019/20 season, Tora Augestad made her debut as Mary Lou in Abraham's operetta Märchen im Grandhotel am Theater Luzern. She has toured extendedly with Marthaler production King Size, in more than 35 cities worldwide. With Marthalers, Bekannte Gefühle, gemischte Gesichter she has been at the Festival d’Automne in Paris and guested Moscow, Oslo and Montpellier. From 2014 to 2019 she was a regular guest at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg platz.
www.toraaugestad.no

Marco Blaauw, trumpet
Why the trumpet? «I’ve always had in mind the image of a troubadour, spreading the news through music. I wanted to do that too - with my trumpet. An important focus of my work has been to further develop the instrument and its playing technique, and to initiate new repertoire.»
Marco Blaauw has an international career as a soloist, and is a member of Ensemble Musikfabrik in Cologne, Germany. Blaauw works in close collaboration with both the established and younger composers of our time. Many works have been especially written for Blaauw, including compositions by Peter Eötvös, Georg Friedrich Haas, Wolfgang Rihm, Rebecca Saunders and John Zorn. Blaauw worked intensely with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Flying over the orchestra in a gimbaled cage, he played the leading role in Stockhausen’s MICHAELs REISE. He presented the premier of HARMONIES for trumpet for the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and has premiered many solo roles from the opera cycle LICHT.
In 2015, he started working with La Monte Young and the Theatre of Eternal Music Brass Ensemble on the melodic version of «The Second Dream of the High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer.» In the coming years, he will produce many concerts throughout Europe to continue performing the version for 8 trumpets. Marco Blaauw's work is widely documented through radio, television and CD recordings. He started a series of solo CD’s in 2005, the sixth of which, Angels, was awarded the «Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2014.»
Blaauw has been intensely active as a teacher, starting with the Stockhausen Courses, International Darmstadt Summer Courses and Brass Academy, Luzern University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Chosen Vale, international master classes and most recently the Stockhausen master’s program at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
As a composer, Blaauw was awarded the 2016 Karl Sczuka Prize (support grant) for his first radio play, «deathangel.»

Talvi Hunt, piano
Talvi Hunt is an Estonian pianist specialised in contemporary music. Talvi is active as a soloist, chamber music musician and orchestra player, which has brought her to collaborate
with different collectives such as Collegium Novum Zürich, Ensemble Ö, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. She has performed in many festivals, including Lucerne Festival, Festival ECLAT (Stuttgart), Klang Basel, Festival ZeitRäume (Basel), Taktlos Festival (Zürich), reMusik (St.Petersburg), Festival AFEKT (Tallinn), ISCM World New Music Days (Tallinn) etc. Since 2015 she is working with Ensemble of Nomads, which is based in Switzerland and is concentrated on multimedia concerts. Currently she is also part of Estonian National Opera Orchestra and Ensemble for New Music Tallinn.
In 2017 Talvi obtained a Master degree in contemporary music interpretation with Prof. Florian Hoelscher at Hochschule Luzern – Musik (Switzerland). Bachelor degree in music performance received Talvi from Estonian Academy of Music and Theater with Age Juurikas. She is also interested in interdisciplinary art projects and improvisation, in which she complemented her skills in Danish National School of Performing Arts in 2012, where she created numerous performances in collaboration with dancers and actors. Talvi has participated in many masterclasses, as well contemporary music courses such as Donaueschinger Musiktage (DE), Darmstadt, 48th Internationalen Ferienkursen für Neue Musik (DE), IMPULS Academy (AT).

Garth Knox, viola
Garth Knox was born in Ireland and spent his childhood in Scotland. He studied with Frederic Riddle at the Royal College of Music in London where he won several prizes for viola and for chamber music. Thereafter he played with most of the leading groups in London in a mixture of all repertoires, from baroque to contemporary music. 
In 1983 he was invited by Pierre Boulez to become a member of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, which involved regular solo playing, including concertos directed by Pierre Boulez, and chamber music, touring widely and playing in international festivals.
In 1990 Garth Knox joined the Arditti String Quartet, which led him to play in all the major concert halls of the world, working closely with and giving first performances of pieces by most of today's leading composers including Ligeti, Kurtag, Berio, Xenakis, Lachenmann, Cage, Feldman and Stockhausen (the famous «Helicopter Quartet»).
In 1998, Garth Knox left the quartet to concentrate on his solo career. As a soloist, he has given premieres by Henze (the Viola Sonata is dedicated to him), Ligeti, Schnittke, Ferneyhough, James Dillon, George Benjamin and many others. He also collaborates regularly in theatre and dance projects, and has written and performed a one-man show for children.
He has recently become a pioneer of the viola d’amore, exploring its possibilities in new music, with and without electronics, and is in the process of creating a new repertoire for this instrument.
Garth Knox now lives in Paris, where he enjoys a full time solo career, giving recitals, concertos and chamber music concerts all over Europe, the USA and Japan. He is also an active composer, and his «Viola Spaces », the first phase of an on-going series of concert studies for strings (published in 2010 by Schott) combines ground-breaking innovation in string technique with joyous pleasure in the act of music making. The pieces have been adopted and performed by young string players all over the world.
Garth Knox is International Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Melise Mellinger, violine
Melise Mellinger studied violin at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg with Professor Wolfgang Marschner from 1978 to 1983 and at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam with Professor Herman Krebbers from 1984 to 1986. From 1987 to 1991 she was a member of the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra. Since 1991 she has worked exclusively as a violinist in ensemble recherche, which she co-founded in 1984. With some 600 premieres since its founding in 1985, the ensemble has played a decisive role in shaping the development of contemporary chamber and ensemble music. She is involved in the recording of more than 50 CDs with music of the 20th and 21st centuries, which have received several international awards, including the Annual Prize of the German Record Critics and the Diapason d`Or.
From 2000 to 2010 she gave courses at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main and at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. Since 2004 she has been teaching at the Ensemble Academy Freiburg. She has also given instrumental lessons and seminars on the practice of New Music, such as at Harvard University, Cambridge, Northwestern University Chicago and at the conservatories in Lviv, Kiev, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen as well as in Mexico and South America. Melise Mellinger has been a lecturer for New Music High Strings (violin/viola) at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart since the summer semester 2018.

Lucas Niggli, drums, improvisation
Lucas Niggli (1968) makes music as a drummer and percussionist in the border area between improvised and composed music.
His formations include STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND, Biondini - Godard - Niggli, KALO YELE (with Aly Keïta), Beat Bag Bohemia, the duo with singer Andreas Schaerer and A Novel Of Anomaly.
His concert tours have taken him all over the world and to many renowned festivals. He collaborates with musical personalities such as Marino Pliakas and Dominik Blum, Nils Wogram, Barry Guy, Maya Homburger, Fred Frith, John Cale, Pierre Favre, Elliott Sharp, Michael Wertmüller, Erika Stucky, Wu Wei, Flea, Xu Fengxia, Tim Berne, Felix Profos, Paul Plimley, Melvin Gibbs, Fritz Hauser, Peter Conradin Zumthor, Aly Keïta and many others.
Niggli's discography includes 60 titles, 20 of which are CDs as a leader and composer. He is also active as an organiser of concerts and festivals and as a lecturer at the Zurich University of Music (ZHdK).

Susanne Peters, flute
Susanne Peters (born 1988, Saarbrücken, Germany) is a flutist who specialises primarily in playing contemporary music. She was already active in this field during her studies in the Netherlands at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague with Kersten McCall. She graduated from the Ligeti Academy during 2011/12 , with an ensemble for new music in cooperation with the ASKO/Schönberg Ensemble under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw, and played among others as a substitute in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam in their AAA series for contemporary music and in the ASKO/Schönberg Ensemble as part of the Holland Festival. With the ensemble oerknal, which she co-founded, she plays regularly in the Netherlands and co-organises the DAMcademy and Balkan Composers Competition in Prishtina, which oerknal founded. In July 2014 she completed her Master's degree in Interpretation in Contemporary Music at the Lucerne School of Music with Pirmin Grehl. Since moving to Switzerland, she has played in numerous ensembles and at numerous festivals in Switzerland and abroad, she has worked with renowned international composers, can be heard on various CD recordings and regularly plays as a guest with the leading ensembles of contemporary music, including Ensemble Musikfabrik. Susanne is a member of the Ensemble Contrechamps, Geneva, the Collegium Novum Zurich and le NEC in la Chaux-de-Fonds. She has given master classes in flute and chamber music at various academies and festivals, including Voix Nouvelles in Royaumont and in Boswil. Susanne plays in various chamber music formations and is also active in the field of music education. In addition to workshops, which she often gives for the music van of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, she is very interested in interdisciplinary formats and initiates participatory mediation approaches in particular (for the Collegium Novum Zurich, among others) and was able to train further in this during a CAS as a "teaching artist" at the Bern University of the Arts. 

Martina Schucan, Violoncello
The new, the living is at the centre of Martina Schucan's understanding of music. At the age of 14, Martina Schucan was accepted into the master class of André Navarra in Detmold (D). After her concert exam, she continued her studies with Heinrich Schiff, Daniel Shafran and Janos Starker. A first prize at the "Gaspar Cassadò" competition in Florence and numerous other awards opened up an international concert career for her.

As a soloist she performs with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Orchestra Tokyo, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and plays at the international festivals of Salzburg, Lucerne, Witten, Schwetzingen, Montpellier, Bratislava and Beijing. As a chamber musician, she takes part in the chamber music festivals of Kuhmo, Prussia Cove and Davos and counts musicians such as Yuri Bashmet, Heinz Holliger, György Kurtág, Raphael Oleg, Veronika Hagen, Shlomo Mintz and the Carmina Quartet among her partners. The exploration of contemporary music is a central part of her artistic commitment. Her interpretations of Henri Dutilleux's concerto, Michael Jarrell's «Assonance V» and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's solo sonata have been acclaimed by experts and audiences alike.

Martina Schucan is a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts and a member of the Collegium Novum Zurich.