Widmann takes over the management of the Lucerne Festival Academy
Jörg Widmann will take over as Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy from January 2026. He succeeds Wolfgang Rihm, who died in 2024, in this role.
Born in 1973, Jörg Widmann studied clarinet and composition in Munich and at the Juilliard School in New York. He taught clarinet and composition in Freiburg from 2001 to 2015 and has taught composition at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin since 2017. In the 2023/24 season, he was composer-in-residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Several contemporary works have been dedicated to him, including clarinet concertos by Wolfgang Rihm, Aribert Reimann and Mark Andre. In 2009, Widmann was composer-in-residence at the Lucerne Festival in the summer. Most recently, a work commissioned by the festival for viola and chamber orchestra was premiered in summer 2023.
The Lucerne Festival Academy was founded in 2004 by Pierre Boulez and Festival Director Michael Haefliger for the field of contemporary music. Composer Wolfgang Rihm has been the artistic director since 2016. Every summer, over 100 young musicians from around 30 countries devote three weeks to the repertoire of the 20th and 21st centuries.
