The Lucerne School of Music is delighted to welcome Friederike Starkloff as Professor of Violin and Mimi Doulton as Lecturer of Voice for the fall semester 2026/27.
With her multifaceted and virtuoso playing, Friederike Starkloff is considered one of the most interesting musicians of her generation. She studied in Freiburg im Breisgau with Rainer Kussmaul and at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin with Antje Weithaas, where she was an assistant from 2017 to 2022. Friederike Starkloff has won numerous internationally renowned competitions and became first concertmaster of the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover at the age of 24. She has been first concertmaster of the Basel Symphony Orchestra since the 2023/24 season. She also performs as a sought-after soloist. As a chamber musician, she can be heard in numerous concerts, including with Markus Becker, Jan Vogler, Leonid Gorokhov and Gerrit Zitterbart. Friederike Starkloff will move from the HMDK Stuttgart to the Lucerne School of Music as Professor of Violin in the fall semester of 2026, succeeding Brian Dean, who will retire at the end of the spring semester of 2026.
The British soprano Mimi Doulton enjoys a growing international reputation as an interpreter of the 20th and 21st century repertoire in particular. She studied at King’s College London and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and made her operatic debut in 2018 in a world premiere by Giorgio Battistelli. Since then, Mimi Doulton has appeared in numerous productions, including with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, at the Royal Opera House London, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at the Tiroler Landestheater, the Stuttgart State Opera and the Bavarian State Opera. Mimi Doulton has taken part in numerous world premieres, and composers such as Elaine Mitchener, Linda Buckley, Michael Finnissy, Rasmus Zwicki and Kroot-Kart Kaev have written works for her. From the fall semester 2026, Mimi Doulton will be the main voice lecturer at the Lucerne School of Music.
