Every year in November, Lucerne Festival Forward offers contemporary music a platform and gives a voice to the musicians of the younger generation.

It all starts out from the idea of using the international network of the Lucerne Festival Academy, which has grown over the years and now comprises more than 1,200 artists, as a collective mastermind. And this is the case in several respects. The concerts are not only prepared and presented by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), our orchestra of excellence for the performance of new and contemporary music. Selected Contemporary Leaders from the Academy network also participate to develop the program as curators. In doing so, they take new approaches to closing the gap between so-called “new music” and the audience: they seek out contact with listeners, experiment with unusual concert formats, focus on lesser-known voices and aesthetic positions with respect to the creation of contemporary music, and purposefully mix nationalities, generations, and genders.

Four Concerts - Four Worlds 

In 2023, the Forward Festival will focus on works that combine music and film, including Fausto Romitelli’s stunning video opera «An Index of Metals» and music to paintings by Gerhard Richter. The African-American composer Julius Eastman can also be rediscovered, and the world premieres of works by Liza Lim and Charles Uzor are eagerly awaited