Thomas Pfiffner

Thomas Pfiffner has been the Director of the Musikkollegium Winterthur since December 2005. He was born in 1965 in Basel and is a trained pianist.

Before coming to Winterthur, he was the managing director of the Zürcher Kammerorchester that he and musical director Howard Griffiths shaped to become one of the leading orchestras in Switzerland.

Prior to that, Thomas Pfiffner was producer with thes CD label "pan classics", Recording Manager of the Basel Symphony Orchestra and managing director of the Basel Music Forum. His activities included such diverse projects as the launch of the "KiKo" series - children's concerts for families at the Tonhalle Zürich, the assumption of the Meisterzyklus Basel/Bern/Zürich, co-founding Lucerne Concerts and the concstruction of the ZKO-Haus in Zürich.

In addition, Thomas Pfiffner is a member of the SUISA-Foundation for Music's management council, member of the Swiss Committee of the "European Cultural Foundation" and managing director of the Meisterzyklus Bern.

His work reflects his keen intererst in the preservation of the major, traditional values of the Musikkollegium Winterthur while introducing something new at the same time in a reasonable way. This is clearly demonstrated in the way in which he organises the programme and the new concert series, for instance "Happy New Ears",  "Piano Plus" or "Soirée Classique". Thus, the Musikkollegium keeps introducing young, emerging artists, Swiss artists and members of the Orchestra in addition to international stars.