Cyrill Schürch’s most recent orchestral work, "Streaks", has been performed by the State Hermitage Orchestra in St. Petersburg (Russia) with Rainer Held, and has been on tour throughout Switzerland and Germany with the Novosibirsk Chamber Orchestra in early 2015.
In May 2015, Cyrill won the first Mario Merz Prize for composition and will compose a new work for the Camerata Bern as part of the prize, in July his piece "Three Seasons" received 1st prize at the music festival at Povoa de Varzim, Portugal and in October he won a 2nd. Recently, Cyrill was prizewinner at the Europa Cantat Composition Contest 2015, the Swiss Children’s and Youth Choir composition contest and in 2012 his "Les Quatrains Valaisans" won a 2nd prize at the Alpenchorfestival Brig competition. He has earned awards and commissions from organizations such as the UBS cultural foundation, AURA contemporary ensemble, EnsembleSpektrum, Ayre Flutes London and Europa Cantat. His music is published by EMR Editions, Helbling-Verlag and Carus-Verlag Germany which has recently agreed to publish most of Cyrill’s choral works.
He is also active as a pianist and chamber musician performing frequently as soloist or with pianist Daniel Vaiman in their Piano Duo. He has also collaborated with EnsembleSpektrum and plays regularly in a piano/violin duo with Leandra Wolf. Born in Lucerne, he has originally started learning to play the accordion and later also took up piano at age 10. Before starting his degrees he studied piano privately with Konstantin Scherbakov. Cyrill holds degrees with distinction in both piano and composition from the University of Houston Moores School of Music working with pianist Nancy Weems and composer Robert Nelson. During his summer at the Aspen Music Festival he studied composition with Sidney Hodkinson and George Tsontakis and piano with John Perry. Other teachers included David Del Tredici and David Olan during a year of postgraduate studies at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. In 2008, he received a PhD from King’s College London studying with Robert Keeley and attended masterclasses with George Benjamin and Silvina Milstein. He is assistant director of the Musikschule Zug where he also teaches piano and composition.