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Since 2017, Stephen McHolm has served as Director of the Verbier Festival Academy, one of the world’s most prestigious summer music academies. McHolm brought a fresh approach to the Academy upon his arrival, with a passion for working with young artists to create connections with contemporary audiences. McHolm also launched the Festival’s UNLTD division—an inventive concept that aims to disrupt norms, push boundaries, and awaken musical curiosity. UNLTD shines a spotlight on emerging talent, including Verbier Festival Academy students and recent alumni, and engaging interactive performances with cross-generational appeal. For 12 years before his arrival in Switzerland, McHolm grew the Honens International Piano Competition Foundation into one of Canada’s most respected and widest-reaching international classical music organisations—discovering, nurturing, presenting and promoting the talents of emerging concert artists. He was described as a “rebel and revolutionary” by Calgary’s Avenue Magazine—a testament to his work in building new audiences for classical music and nurturing artists ready for 21st century careers. The Honens artistic and career development programme, together with the Honens recording label, which he founded in 2008, were held up as models for the world’s leading international music competitions and artist development trusts.
Martin T:son Engstroem was born in Stockholm in 1953 where he received his schooling and a degree in Music History from the University of Stockholm. His father was the sculptor Torolf Engström and mother Inge Rosenfeld-Engström.
He began early his career as organizer of concerts by creating his own series of Sunday afternoon concerts for young Swedish musicians at the National Museum in Stockholm. This series became the leading window for young Swedish talent through the 1970s. Still a teenager he also arranged major concerts in Stockholm for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Antal Dorati and Staffan Scheja.
1972-1973 he worked for one year at the Foreign Division of Ibbs & Tillett artists’ management in London mainly dealing with British artists performing abroad. Here he worked a.o. with John Ogdon, Shura Cherkassky and many UK orchestras.
In 1975, Engstroem moved to Paris to become partner in the artists management company ‘Opéra et Concert’. During the 12 years with the agency, he worked intimately with many major artists such as Karl Böhm, Birgit Nilsson, Jessye Norman, Lucia Popp, Renato Bruson and Leonard Bernstein. His prime interest was to develop new talent and many of the young musicians he represented went on to major careers such as Barbara Hendricks, Neil Shicoff, Han-Na Chang and Giuseppe Sinopoli.
During many years he enjoyed a close collaboration with Herbert von Karajan.
After having moved to Switzerland in 1987 with his wife, soprano Barbara Hendricks and their two children, he worked for a period of time as consultant to EMI France, the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele and the Paris Opera (co-organizer of the opening of l’Opéra de Paris / Bastille in 1992 with Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson Thomas and Robert Wilson). Engstroem was instrumental in the choice of Myung-Whun Chung as Artistic Director of l’Opéra de Bastille.
In 1991 he started to put together what in 1994 became the Verbier Festival & Academy for which he remains the artistic and executive head as Founder & Director. The Verbier Festival has over the years developed into one of the most innovative performing arts communities in Europe. In 2000, Engstroem, together with the Swiss bank UBS developed what became one of the most attractive training orchestras in the world, the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, with James Levine as its Music Director. Charles Dutoit followed as Music Director in 2009 and Valery Gergiev, the present Music Director of the Verbier Festival Orchestra started in 2018.
2005 saw the beginning of the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra which immediately enjoyed a close association with Maxim Vengerov through major tours and a highly successful EMI recording of Mozart Violin Concertos. In 2008 Gabór Takács-Nagy was named Music Director of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra.
Between 1999 and 2003, Engstroem was Vice President of Artists & Repertoire of Deutsche Grammophon (and between 2003 and 2005, Senior Executive Producer & Artists Development). He was directly responsible for the recording projects of many major artists such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado and Maurizio Pollini to name but a few. Among the new artists he signed to DG were Anna Netrebko, Lang Lang, Yundi Li, Hélène Grimaud, Ilya Gringolts, Hilary Hahn and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
He has been a jury member of numerous competitions: in 2005 at the 50th anniversary of the Paganini Competition in Genoa, in 2006 he was invited by Galina Vishnewskaja to be on the jury of her first vocal competition in Moscow. In 2009 Thomas Quasthoff invited him to Berlin as a jury member for the ‘Das Lied’ Competition. In 2009, 2011, 2013 (the last two years he was the President of the Jury) he was a member of the Clara Haskil Competition, and in 2010 member of the jury for the Geneva Competition (voice). In 2014 he was a member of the Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv. Engstroem has had a long-term relationship with the Tchaikovsky Competition; in 2011 he was a member of the violin jury and in 2015 he was a member of the piano jury; in 2019 he chaired the violin jury.
In June 2011, The Nobel Foundation in Lindau induced Martin T:son Engstroem and Bill Gates to their Honorary Senate. The Foundation thereby recognized “their sustained personal commitment to supporting and encouraging young talents by opening the door to future opportunities.”
From 2013 to 2016 he was a Member of the Board of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne and of the Board of Governors of the Glion Institute of Higher Studies. From 2014 to 2017 he was also a Board member of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva.
In April 2015, Engstroem received the Dmitri Shostakovich Prize at a ceremony held at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, in Moscow. Awarded by the Yuri Bashmet Foundation, the recognition is considered to be one of the most prestigious prizes in the field of Russian art. He is the first laureate of the Dmitri Shostakovich Prize who is not a musician.
Engstroem has also worked as Global Advisor on Artistic Planning for IMG Artists and as consultant for Rolex in developing artistic projects in China and India.
Since 2016 he has been a Board Member of the Macao Festival and, in 2018, became Artistic Director both of the Tsinandali Festival in Georgia and of the Riga Jurmala Festival in Latvia.
Engstroem now lives on the shores of Lac Leman in Switzerland with his second wife Blythe Teh-Engstroem and their two daughters.
Beatrice Fihn has more than a decade of experience in disarmament diplomacy and civil society mobilisation through her work with ICAN, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Campaign coalition working to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. Fihn was trained at University College London (UCL) in international law and at Stockholm University in international relations.
Yves Daccord is a renowned humanitarian leader, international strategist, influencer and changemaker. His current focus is on the theme of the impact of Covid-19 on our social contract and the role of cities in the age of digital surveillance and pandemics—the subject of a special initiative at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. From 2010 to March 2020, he served as Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Daccord sits on the Board of several organisations and holds a degree in political science and an honorary doctorate in social sciences from the University of St Gallen.
Before joining Wellcome Trust as its Director, Jeremy Farrar was Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam. In addition to being listed 12th on Fortune magazine’s 50 World’s Greatest Leaders in 2015, he has also received the Memorial Medal and Ho Chi Minh City Medal from the Government of Vietnam. In 2018 he received the President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian of the Year Award, and was knighted for services to global health the following year. Farrar is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences UK, the National
Academies USA, the European Molecular Biology Organisation and is a Fellow of The Royal Society.
Jan Swafford’s music has been played around the country and abroad by ensembles including the symphonies of St. Louis, Indianapolis, and the Dutch Radio; Boston’s new-music groups Musica Viva, Collage, and Dinosaur Annex; and chamber ensembles including the Peabody Trio, the Chamber Orchestra of Tennessee, and the Scott Chamber Players of Indianapolis.
Over the years his music has evolved steadily, but in all its avatars his work is forthrightly expressive, individual in voice, and steadily concerned with lucidity of texture and form. Beneath the surface there are contributions from world music, especially Indian and Balinese, and from jazz and blues. The titles of his works—including Landscape with Traveler, From the Shadow of the Mountain, and The Silence at Yuma Point—reveal a steady inspiration from nature. The composer views his work as a kind of classicism: a concern with clarity and directness, pieces that seem familiar though they are new, that aspire to sound like they wrote themselves.
Also a well-known writer on music, Swafford is author of biographies of Ives, Brahms, and Beethoven. His journalism appears regularly in Slate. He is a long-time program writer and preconcert lecturer for the Boston Symphony and has written program notes and essays for the orchestras of Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto.
Kenneth Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations, which operates in more than 90 countries. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations.
Bruno Mégevand is an attorney at law admitted to the Bar of Geneva. After practising as an associate in the law firm of Me Jean-Philippe Maître from 1983 until 1986, he became an independant lawyer. In 1989, he founded the law firm Megevand & Grosgean which became Notter, Megevand and Grosjean. Since 2002, he is the founding partner of the law firm NOMEA.