Directorate

Christoph Brenner

Christoph Brenner earned a degree in violin (with Françoise Zöldy-Pfister) and in viola (with Christoph Schiller). He continued his studies with Christoph Schiller at the Musik-Akademie Basel (Concert diploma) and with Piero Farulli at Scuola di Musica di Fiesole. He attended diverse masterclasses, for example with Bruno Giuranna and Hatto Beyerl and studied chamber music with Walter Levin at the Basel Music Academy. In addition to his musical studies he received a Masters degree in History at the University of Basel (with Markus Mattmüller) and in Italian Philology.
After several years of intense activity in chamber music, music education, orchestral and solo performance, he was appointed teacher of viola and chamber music at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana. In 1999 he became Director General of the same institute. 
For nearly ten years, until 2009, he was a member of the Foundation Board and afterwards the Experts commission (Fachkommission) of the Swiss Music Competition for Youth.
In March 2010 he was elected President of the Swiss Conference of Universities of Music, having already been member and coordinator of diverse internal commissions (QM, Music Pedagogy).
In his spare time he participates in activities such as being an expert for national and international musical competitions.

Roberto Valtàncoli

Roberto Valtàncoli attained a diploma in violin (with distinction) at the Conservatorio “Cherubini” in Florence and a soloist’s diploma at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana. He also has a degree in communication sciences with a specialisation in cultural politics.
As a violinist he studied with Carlo Chiarappa, Corrado Romano, Franco Gulli and, for chamber music, with the Trio di Trieste, Franco Rossi (Quartetto Italiano) and the Amadeus Quartet.
For a number of years he combined his concert work with teaching at the CSI.
He was made a director of the CSI in 2004.

Nadir Vassena

Born in Balerna (Switzerland) in 1970, Nadir Vassena studied composition with Bruno Zanolini in Milan and with Johannes Schöllhorn in Freiburg-im-Breisgau.
In 1993 he attended composition courses directed by Brian Ferneyhough at the Fondation Royaumont in France. He has been invited to numerous international festivals and awarded prizes on various occasions, including the Westdeutscher Rundfunk competition in Cologne in 1992, the Institut für Neue Musik der Hochschule der Künste in Berlin in 1994 (joint first prize), and the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg in 1997.
In 1999 he won the prize awarded by the Christoph Delz Foundation in Basel, in 2000 he had a fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, and in 2002 he had an artist’s residential scholarship at the Denkmalschmiede Höfgen.
He has been a director of the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana since 2004.