Skip to main content

News Success Sonja Lachenmayr receives Bavarian Art Award

Photo: Johannes Dubbrick

On November 17, 2023, Minister of Art Markus Blume awarded the Bavarian Art Prize 2023 to a total of 19 artists. The prizewinners, who are at the beginning of their careers, are characterized by exceptional artistic talent and can demonstrate outstanding achievements. The prize is endowed with 6,000 euros each. Congratulations to our alumna!

Jury laudation

The conductor and jazz singer Sonja Lachenmayr impresses with her great innovative strength in developing new concert formats as well as unusual programs and projects combined with great social commitment. She demonstrates this, for example, in the New World Orchestra she founded, with which she combines classical music at the highest musical level with sustainable themes and which is the first classical orchestra dedicated to the dissemination and promotion of the UN's 17 global goals for sustainable development.

Sonja Lachenmayr is also involved in music education and is active in international community music projects (e.g. Musicians for a better life e. V. and for Refudocs e. V.). She is a sensitive, versatile and open-minded conductor, singer and orchestra leader who has already made a name for herself with her own orchestral projects and as a conductor in Bavaria, enriching the Bavarian cultural landscape in the most exemplary way.

Vita

Sonja Lachenmayr, born in 1992, studied a Bachelor's degree in jazz singing at the Nuremberg University of Music, a teaching degree for music at grammar schools and a Bachelor's and Master's degree in choral conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. She began her musical career at the age of five with the harp, piano, flute and later the trombone. She has gained work shadowing, concert and performance experience with various ensembles, orchestras and choirs, as well as concert tours within Europe, to the USA, Oman, Egypt and Tanzania, which have shaped her into a multi-faceted musician.

The Germany Scholarship recipient received a scholarship from the German Orchestra Foundation in 2021. In 2021, Lachenmayr received a scholarship from the Free State of Bavaria to promote equal opportunities for women in research and teaching for the founding of the sustainable orchestra "New World Orchestra". In the same year, she was accepted into the Forum Dirigieren. At the beginning of 2022, Lachenmayr successfully completed her master's degree in orchestral conducting in Nuremberg with Prof. Rumstadt and has been working as a freelance conductor ever since.