Proclaimed at an early age by the Swiss and Italian press as a “miraculous trumpeter”, Giuliano Sommerhalder’s perfect technique, pure intonation and beautifully articulated artistry are steadily making him a talking point internationally.

On the 23rd of March this year the Tagesspiegel Berlin wrote, “The Zurich born 21-year-old serves up the sweetest cantilenas with unerring taste, he enchants his listeners with noblesse in the dramatic passages and the lightness of his hair-raising, chromatically winding runs and leaps is astonishing”.

But technical virtuosity and lightness of touch alone do not raise Guiliano Sommerhalder above the pool of young talent and win him prizes. It is his cultivated musicality that proves him an absolute musician.

Giuliano Sommerhalder was born into a musical family. His father is the internationally respected trumpeter and teacher Max Sommerhalder, and yet his choice of the trumpet as a means of artistic expression was made more or less by chance. He is a German citizen, but was born in Zurich and grew up in Italy. As well as these three languages, with which he grew up, also speaks English and Spanish.

The standard trumpet literature has long been part of his repertoire and he likes to explore the unusual, playing works by Peskin, Méndez and Ponchielli.

Giuliano Sommerhalder has appeared as a soloist at the Musikverein, Vienna, the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, The Herkulessaal, Munich, the Parco della Musica Roma, and in Berlin’s Philharmonie. He has been invited to appear across Europe and in Asia and America and has performed with the Deutsche Symphonieorchester Berlin, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, the symphony orchestras of the Czech, Polish and North German broadcasting corporations, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists and many others. Sommerhalder has worked with many celebrated conductors, among them Claudio Abbado, Charles Dutoit, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Eliahu Inbal, Lorin Maazel, Roger Norrington, Mstislav Rostropovich and David Zinman. His US debut with the Indianapolis Symphony under Robert Minczuk was met with standing ovations.

In September 2006, Giuliano Sommerhalder will join the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig as their solo trumpeter. New challenges, the opportunity to broaden his repertoire, and the chance to work under numerous world famous conductors within a musical community have moved him to take up the ensemble’s offer. His artistic personality will certainly grow and ripen within this forum.