Tjasha Gafner

Swiss harpist Tjasha Gafner, born in 1999, is widely regarded as one of the leading artists of her generation. After completing a soloist degree at the Haute École de Musique Lausanne with Letizia Belmondo, she graduated from The Juilliard School in New York, where she studied with Nancy Allen.

In September 2023, she won First Prize and the Audience Prize at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. She has received more than 20 awards, including First Prizes at the Félix Godefroid Competition in Belgium, Suoni d’Arpa in Italy, and the Martine Géliot Competition in France. In 2021, she was named “Soloist 2022” by the MFP competition of the Médias Francophones Publics, and in the same year she received the Max D. Jost Prize as well as the Leenaards Cultural Grant. In 2023, Die Zeit selected her as one of Germany’s 30 most influential personalities under 30.

Since the age of ten, Tjasha Gafner has appeared regularly in solo recitals in Germany, France, Italy, England, Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, and Hong Kong. She has performed in renowned venues such as the Tonhalle Zurich and the Konzerthaus Vienna, and has been invited as a soloist by ensembles and orchestras including Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Ensemble des Jeunes Virtuoses de New York, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, and the London Mozart Players.

Her work is featured by Swiss Radio and Television, BR Klassik, and France Musique. She recorded her first CD at the age of 18. In 2021, she released two further albums in collaboration with flautist Héléna Macherel, the first on Orpheus Classical and the second on Claves. In 2022, she gave her first masterclass during a solo tour in Argentina. In 2023, she travelled to the Congo to perform, teach, and build instruments from recycled materials.

Since 2020, she has maintained a close collaboration with the theatre company 2B Company, touring regularly across Europe. A key focus of her artistic profile is expanding the harp repertoire through her own transcriptions and through collaborations with composers such as Constantin Macherel, Ziyi Tao, Jake Safirstein, and Laurent Coulomb, who have written works for her.