Thüring Bräm
After graduating from college THÜRING BRÄM (1944, Basel, Switzerland) was educated in piano, conducting and composition in Basel. He made musicological studies at the Universities of Basel and Heidelberg. He was in the USA from 1970 until 1973 where he worked as conductor and coach at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, at the Santa Fe Summer Opera, at Aspen Music Festival, and studied at the University of California in Berkeley where he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in composition. He was Head of the Basel Academy of Music from 1973 until 1987. Since 1987 he is director of the Lucerne Conservatory. He is active as a conductor in Switzerland and abroad. – During his years as a student the most crucial influences he received were from Anton Webern and Pierre Boulez (primarily as a conductor and analyst). After visiting America he became more involved in improvisational music having been influenced by John Cage, during the mid 1980s this became more structured music when he was using plain traditional material to produce new sound effects, for example in the Oratorio Litteri un Schattä - Luci e Ombre or in the orchestra work Florestan und Eusebius. He has received several important commissions and prizes for composition including from Pro Helvetia, the city of Basel, IMF (International Music Festival in Lucerne), Radio DRS, Danzig, BBC Singers, Edwin Fischer recognition prize, University of California and others.