Out of 271 applicants, Music Director Paavo Järvi has selected six candidates to spend four days in April with him, the orchestra and the Management Team to further develop their technical skills.
He chose three women and three men from six different nations, aged between 26 to 30.
Here we present the candidates of this year's Conductors' Academy:
Anthony Fournier is not only a conductor, but also a composer and violinist. At the age of 20, he made his soloist debut at Victoria Hall with the Camerata Armin Jordan (Orchestre de la Suisse Romande).
Due to dystonia, Anthony Fournier was forced to give up his career as a violinist. Therefore, three years ago, he decided to take up conducting. He began studying conducting with Donato Renzetti and Giuseppe Montesano in Italy, which he is currently continuing with Aurélien Azan-Zielinski in Lausanne. The 29-year-old musician from Sion has already conducted various orchestras such as the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Szolnok Symphony Orchestra and the Savaria Symphony Orchestra.
Aivis Greters completed his conducting studies at the Latvian Academy of Music with Mārtiņš Ozoliņš in June 2021. He has already attended numerous master classes, such as with Zbigniew Graca, Lutz Kohler and Alexander Polianichko. He also participated in the Järvi Academy in Pärnu in 2019 and 2021.
In the 2020/21 season, Aivis Greters made his debut with the three most important Latvian orchestras - the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonietta Riga and Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. In early 2021, he received the Grand Music Award in the «Young Artist of the Year 2020» category. He was also awarded second prize in the «German Conductor's Prize» competition in 2021.
Zofia Kiniorska first studied piano at the Jozef Elsner National Conservatory in Warsaw before going on to study conducting at Warsaw's Fryderyk Chopin University of Music with Marek Pijarowski and Monika Wolińska from 2016 to 2021.
Born in Warsaw in 1996, the conductor has already worked with various symphony orchestras and conducted various premieres of works by Polish composers. She regularly takes part in master classes, for example with Marin Alsop, Carlo Montanaro, George Tchitchinadze and Yu Feng. She has also worked as an assistant conductor with Monika Wolińska, Paweł Przytocki and Rafał Janiak.
After training as a pianist and organist, Liubov Nosova began to study conducting in 2017. She completed international courses in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Spain with Rodolfo Fischer, Johannes Schlaefli, James Lowe and Vladimir Fedoseev. Since 2018 she has been attending a CAS programme with Ivan Wasilevsky in orchestral conducting at the ZHdK. In 2019, she followed conducting studies at the UdK Berlin with Steven Sloane and Harry Curtis and at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Alexander Titov. In 2021 Liubov Nosova was awarded second prize at the International Conducting Competition «Llíria, City of Music». Since 2021 she has been a scholarship holder of the Conducting Forum of the German Music Council.
The young South Korean Yerry Park studied both composition and conducting with Kim Kyoung Hee at Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul. Further studies in conducting with Simeon Pironkoff also took her to the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
To hone her skills, Yerry Park took part in the master classes of the Korean Conductors Association, for example with Julian Kovatchev in 2017 and Kim Kyoung Hee in 2019, or with the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra in the same year, where she conducted the final concert.
Born in 1992, Finnish Janne Valkeajoki studied conducting with Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg, where he was trained by Ari Rasilainen. During his studies he conducted numerous ensembles in Finland and Germany, including the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz and the Nürnberger Symphoniker.
In addition, Janne Valkeajoki is a classical accordionist in demand worldwide. He therefore regularly appears as conductor and soloist at European festivals, such as Musica nova Helsinki, the «Acht Brücken» festival in Cologne and the «Lange Nacht der Musik» in Munich.
The four masterclasses and the closing concert will be livestreamed from 07 to 09 April. After the closing concert, the audience will have the opportunity to vote for the audience winner.
Supported by the Freundeskreis Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich – exclusive project partner
Board and lodging for the academy members supported by Ruth Burkhalter
