The Geneva International String Academy invites the violist and composer Garth Knox who will give masterclasses and workshops on interpretation of contemporary repertoire.

Garth Knox was born in Ireland and spent his childhood in Scotland. Being the youngest of four children who all played string instruments, he was encouraged to take up the viola and quickly decided to make this his career. He studied with Frederic Riddle at the Royal College of Music in London where he won several prizes for viola and for chamber music. Thereafter he played with most of the leading groups in London in a mixture of all repertoires, from baroque to contemporary music.

In 1983 he was invited by Pierre Boulez to become a member of the Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris, which involved regular solo playing, including concertos directed by Pierre Boulez, and chamber music, touring widely and playing in international festivals.

In 1990 Garth Knox joined the Arditti String Quartet, which led him to play in all the major concert halls of the world, working closely with and giving first performances of pieces by most of today’s leading composers including Ligeti, Kurtag, Berio, Xenakis, Lachenmann, Cage, Feldman and Stockhausen (the famous“Helicopter Quartet”).

Since leaving the quartet In 1998, to concentrate on his solo career, he has given premieres by Ligeti, Schnittke, George Benjamin and many others, including pieces which were especially written for him by composers like Henze, Haas, Saariaho, James Dillon. He also collaborates regularly in theatre and dance projects, and has written and performed a one-man show for children.

He has recently become a pioneer of the viola d’amore, exploring its possibilities in new music, with and without electronics, and is in the process of creating a new repertoire for this instrument.

Garth Knox now lives in Paris, where he enjoys a full time solo career, giving recitals, concertos and chamber music concerts all over Europe, the USA and Japan. He is also an active composer, and his «Viola Spaces », the first phase of an on-going series of concert studies for strings (published in 2010 by Schott) combines ground-breaking innovation in string technique with joyous pleasure in the act of music making. The pieces have been adopted and performed by young string players all over the world.

Garth Knox is Visiting Professor of viola at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

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Sarah studies viola at the Geneva Conservatory of Music (CMG) under the tutelage of Noémie Bialobroda. Her rapid integration into the intensive course of the Conservatory allowed her to benefit very early on from the advice of professors from the HEM-Geneva such as García Alarcón. Today, she continues her career in the CMG pre-professional cursus.

In order to complete her training, Sarah participates in high-level international academies such as the Lac Leman Music Masterclasses (2021 and 2022), 2022), the Geneva International String Academy (2021, 2022, 2023),, the Verbier Festival Soloists Academy (2021) and the Kronberg Academy Workshops (2021). She was thus able to perfect her skills with renowned artistic personalities such as Nobuko Imai, Lawrence Power, Jean Sulem, Antoine Tamestit and Tabea Zimmermann.

At the age of 20, she wins the first Prize at the 79th edition of the Concours de Geneve 2025. In addition to sharing the main prize with Brian Isaacs, Sarah Strohm received most of the other awards. The Victoria Hall audience also strongly supported her, granting her the Audience Prize, the Young Audience Prize, and the Students’ Prize. These distinctions mark a new step in her remarkable journey.

Despite her young age, she has also obtained various distinctions on the national and international scene, including the EMCY prize (2022), the second prize in the Johannes Brahms competition (Pörtschach/Austria, 2021) and the first prize in the competition of the Aims Foundation to play as a soloist with symphony orchestra (Spain/Solsona, 2019). She is also multi-laureate of the Swiss Youth Music Competition (2016; 2018; 2022) and has just qualified for the final of the Valiant Forum competition which will take place as part of the Murten Classics 2023 festival.

Sarah performs regularly as a soloist: she has just performed the concerto for viola, clarinet and orchestra by Max Bruch under the direction of Alexei Ogrintchouk and Hummel's Pot-Pourri with the Trois-Chêne orchestra. Finally, her involvement in the field of chamber music has allowed her to perform alongside established musicians such as Garth Knox and Antje Weithaas.

Sarah is supported by the Ruth and Ernst Bürkhalter Foundation.

Born in Geneva in 2001, Johannes Moehrle started the viola at the age of four with Laurent Rochat and went on to study with Noémie Bialobroda and Andriy Viytovych. In 2019 he joined Tabea Zimmermann’s class at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, and in 2020 began a degree in French and German literature at the University of Oxford; he believes that exploring the links between the two art forms deepens his understanding of both.

He has attended masterclasses with Nobuko Imai, Garth Knox and Jean Sulem, and has played in the Verbier Festival orchestras, at the Zermatt Music Academy and at the Karajan and Seiji Ozawa academies. A member of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra since 2021, he has been artistic director of the Ensemble PuplinGE Classique, resident at the Puplinge Classique festival, since 2022.