Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra

The Lucerne Festival Academy is an orchestra-sized educational institution devoted exclusively to the interpretation and performance of contemporary classical music. It has taken place each summer since 2003 in the Swiss city of Lucerne as part of the Lucerne Festival in Summer. Founded by the French composer Pierre Boulez and festival director Michael Haefliger, over 1,300 young musicians from over 60 countries have taken part in the Academy, described by The Guardian as "the annual laboratory in which brilliant young musicians are immersed in the performance practice of 20th- and 21st-century music".