Institution

Verbier Festival Orchestra
The Verbier Festival is an international classical music event that takes place each summer in the mountain town of Verbier, Switzerland. The Festival’s mission is to build a community of exchange between great masters and young artists from all over the world and to be a leader in its field by providing meaningful music education programmes.
Launched in 1994, and now globally renowned, the Festival welcomes audiences with a distinctive and exhilarating blend of events, both large-scale and intimate. Audiences from around the globe come to experience music-making at the highest level in a setting that brings them close to star performers, rising talent and a complete process of learning, rehearsal and performance.

Speaker

Martin Engstroem, Founder & Artistic Director

Martin Engstroem was born in 1953 in Stockholm. He grew up there and obtained his degree in Music History and Russian at Stockholm University. Moving to Paris in 1975, he became a partner in the artistic agency Opéra et Concert. He also worked closely with Herbert von Karajan for many years. Engstroem moved to Switzerland in 1986. During this period, he was a consultant for EMI France, for the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele and the Opéra national de Paris.

In 1991 he started to put together what in 1994 became the Verbier Festival & Academy for which he remains the artistic and executive head as Founder & Director. In 2000 and 2005, he set up respectively the Verbier Festival Orchestra and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. In 2013, a new education project was launched under his initiative, the Verbier Festival Music Camp (today renamed the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra).
From 1999 to 2003, Engstroem was Vice-President of Deutsche Grammophon for the sector ‘Artists and Repertoire’. Then from 2003 to 2005, he was appointed Senior Executive Producer & Artist Development.