Musical Instruments

GAIA Music Festival

The GAIA Music Festival is an annual non-profit chamber music festival held in Oberhofen, Hilterfingen, Thun and Bern, Switzerland. It was founded in 2006 by Dutch-Irish violinist Gwendolyn Masin, who serves as its artistic director. The festival takes its name from Gaia, the Greek personification of the Earth, which the organisation interprets as a metaphor for music as a living ecosystem shaped by the interaction of artists, audiences and their physical surroundings. Originally established near Stuttgart, Germany, the festival made its Swiss debut in 2009 and was officially renamed the GAIA Music Festival in 2014. It has since become one of the prominent chamber music events in Switzerland, known for its residency-based format, open public rehearsals, an annually changing thematic framework, and the pairing of mainstream chamber repertoire with rarely performed or newly commissioned works. From 2010 until 2014, the patron of the festival was conductor David Zinman, then Chief Conductor of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. The festival stages performances in historic venues such as Oberhofen Castle on Lake Thun, the Town Church of Thun, and — since its expansion into Bern — museums and cultural institutions in the Swiss capital. Live recordings from every edition are released digitally through Orchid Classics and Naxos.

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See also

• ▸C. F. Martin & Company
• ▸Adysh Gospels
• ▸Dame Alice Owen's School

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