Name: Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Participants in the Contemporary-Conducting Program
Start: 2026-08-22T21:00:00
Location: KKL Luzern Concert Hall

Lucerne Festival

The piercing call of the carnyx likely sounded across Lake Lucerne more than 2,000 years ago, when Celtic tribes settled in Central Switzerland. Liza Lim has composed a concerto for this ancient bronze trumpet, nearly two meters long, asking herself “how ancient lineages of human and more-than-human creativity reside in bodies, cultural artefacts and the Deep Time histories of place, carrying seeds of resilience and also potential danger that may yet bloom again.” Far less exotic is the second solo instrument of the evening, the clarinet. Yet composer-in-residence Mark Andre — inspired by extensive sound experiments with Jörg Widmann — coaxes from it a wealth of entirely new timbres. 

Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Elim Chan

KKL Luzern Concert Hall

Not quite as famous as the film Jaws but every bit as legendary: The Yellow Shark, Frank Zappa’s final album. In 1992, shortly before his far-too-early death and already visibly weakened by cancer, the American avant-garde rock maverick joined forces with the new music specialists from the Ensemble Modern. For them he wrote a virtuosic orchestral suite that blends newly created pieces with Zappa favorites like Uncle Meat and G-Spot Tornado. That last work — a whirlwind celebration of the vaginal orgasm — was originally composed for the electronic Synclavier and long thought to be unplayable.