Trumpet player Giuliano Sommerhalder was born into a family of musicians in 1985 and grew up in Italy.

In 2003, a year before completing his schooling, he carried off the second prize at the renowned international music competition of the ARDbroadcasting network in Munich and was the joint winner of the Maurice André competition in Paris, after having won other important contests, such as the Prague Spring Festival (2003), the Timofei Dokschitzer Competition in Vilnius (2002), the Concertino Praga (2001) and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory Competition in Moscow (1997). In addition, he was awarded European Culture Prizes in Munich in 1999 and in Berlin in 2002. In 2008 he was accepted into the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme.

 

Giuliano Sommerhalder studied with Pierluigi Salvi at the Conservatorio "Giuseppe Verdi" in Como and with Max Sommerhalder at the Detmold College of Music. He also gleaned important stimulus from Maurice André, Eric Aubier, Stephen Burns, Edward Carroll, Hans Gansch, Pierre Thibaud, James Thompson and others.

 

He played in Claudio Abbado's Orchestra Mozart in Bologna in 2004, was chosen by Lorin Maazel as solo trumpeter for his Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, and has been solo trumpeter in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly from 2006 until 2011, the year in which he was moved to the same position at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam under Mariss Jansons, where he remained until 2013.

 

Besides his soloistical and orchestral activities, he has been a member of the brass quintet Italian Wonderbrass since 2006.

 

As a soloist on both modern and historical instruments, Giuliano Sommerhalder has appeared throughout Europe, America, and Australia, at the Vienna Musikverein (where he played Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto), the Berlin Philharmonie (both the Great and the Chamber Music Halls) and other important venues, at the Lucerne Festival, the City of London Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.    

 

He has performed as a soloist with ensembles such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester of Berlin, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the NDR Philharmonic Orchestra in Hanover, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists, the Basle Chamber Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, and the symphony orchestras of the Czech and Polish broadcasting corporations.

In 2014 he will hold his African debut in Durban, South Africa, performing Henri Tomasi's Trumpet Concerto with the KwaZulu Natal Philharmonic, as well as his Asian debut performing two Concertos by Amilcare Ponchielli in Hong Kong.

Giuliano Sommerhalder's discography includes two solo albums, " Romantic Virtuosity", a collection of virtuosic masterpieces of the german-russian Romanticism, and " Amilcare Ponchielli - Concertos", dedicated to the great Italian composer Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886) and featuring his concertos for trumpet and euphonium as well as a capriccio for oboe (with Roland Fröscher, Euphonium, and Simone Sommerhalder, Oboe).
In 2012, the Ponchielli Album was awarded the prestigious ECHO-Klassik Music Prize in the category "Concerto Recording of the Year / 19th Century".

On baroque trumpet, he has recorded Johann Friedrich Fasch's Trumpet Concerto in D Major. He is also featured in four albums of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, performing J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 and the Christmas Oratorio, among others.

 

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