Swiss conductor, born in Lucerne in 1957. He studied at the Basel Music Academy with Jürg Wyttenbach, and at the Hamburg College of Music and Visual Arts with Klauspeter Seibel and Christoph von Dohnányi. Very soon he made a name for himself as a specialist for new music, leading to engagements with major ensembles of this category.

Besides this main emphasis of his work, he is widely in demand as an artistic leader of major opera productions of the mainly contemporary repertory. His productions include Mauricio Kagel’s Aus Deutschland, Bruno Maderna’s Satyricon at the Basel Theatre directed by Herbert Wernickes, The Unanswered Question (Deutsches Theatertreffen in Berlin, 1998), and 20th Century Blues, directed by Christoph Marthaler, as well as the Swiss première of the opera Die Soldaten by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. In 2002 he conducted Alban Berg’s Lulu for the Hanover State Theater.

Since 1989, he has lectured on score playing, chamber music, and interpretation of contemporary music at the Basel College of Music, and has been president of the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM) in Basel since 1998.

As a pianist he regularly performs as an accompanist at song recitals and as a chamber musician. He is the co-founder of the Ensemble Phoenix Basel.