Stauffer Center for Strings is born

The best of the international music community arrives in Cremona with the creation of a unique artistic project dedicated entirely to stringed instruments.

The first international music center for higher education, research, composition, violin making, production, management and innovation opens in Cremona, an ambitious and innovative cultural project born from the experience of the prestigious Stauffer Academy, founded in 1985.

“The Stauffer Foundation, which for more than 50 years has been financing most of the training activities in the field of violin making, musicology and higher education for string instrumentalists, wanted to provide the Stauffer Academy, established in 1985, with a new and prestigious home,” says Foundation President Alessandro Tantardini. “At a historical moment of such great difficulty, even for the world of culture, the Foundation therefore intended to significantly strengthen the mission of its main initiative, entrusting Dr. Paolo Petrocelli with the task of conceiving and implementing a new and challenging artistic project of international scope, which will allow the Stauffer Academy to begin a new phase of growth and development. The significant resources with which Walter Stauffer has generously endowed the Foundation now allow us to broaden the already important spectrum of interventions in support of culture and in particular of musical talents, who will be able to attend all our courses free of charge, as they have been since the beginning of the Academy’s activity, so that merit and not socio-economic status is, in practicality, increasingly the only real element of selection.”

The Academy will merge within the Stauffer Center, along with the Stauffer Labs, innovative creative departments. For the 2021-2022 academic year, General Director Paolo Petrocelli announces an unprecedented program:

More than 40 internationally renowned artists as outstanding lecturers and dozens of international partner institutions and organizations together to support the creation of the world’s most innovative higher music education project entirely dedicated to strings. A high education project to which the best talents will have access thanks to full scholarships for all the programs offered.

Joining the historic Masters of the Stauffer Academy-Savatore Accardo, Bruno Giuranna, Antonio Meneses, Franco Petracchi and the Cremona Quartet-will be the most prestigious names in the international music community, including violinists Lisa Batiashvili, Daniel Hope, Viktoria Mullova, Julian Rachlin violists Lawrence Power, Antoine Tamestit; cellists Sol Gabetta, Steven Isserlis, Mischa Maisky, Alisa Weilerstein; double bassists Uxía Martínez Botana, Ödön Rácz; composer Caroline Shaw.

Collaborations with leading specialized ensembles and residencies with the world’s leading universities-including Yale University’s School of Music, the Royal College of Music in London, Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, Sorbonne University in Paris-for the first time together in a single platform for higher music education.

Among the most important new developments for Stauffer Academy courses: the creation of the world’s first advanced course for concertmasters, taught by the first violins of Europe’s ten leading orchestras; among the courses in the new Stauffer Labs: the string composition workshop with Pulitzer Prize for Music winner Caroline Shaw, the media lab with BBC Music Magazine, and innovation workshops with metaLAB (at) Harvard and the Karajan Institute.

“Thanks to the solidity and foresight of the Stauffer Foundation, we have created an extraordinary opportunity: to realize a unique cultural project designed to call together on Cremona the best artistic excellence at the international level, in support of future generations of musicians,” says Stauffer Center General Director Paolo Petrocelli. “Taking inspiration from the extraordinary 30-year experience of the Stauffer Academy and the path of excellence traced by its historic Masters, we have developed a new artistic vision based on the principles of innovation, internationality, sustainability and absolute quality. Our motto for the year 2021-2022 will be “elevate talent, celebrate excellence” for the future of music. With the project of the Center, Academy and Labs, Stauffer thus accompanies Cremona to definitively take its place among the most important world capitals of music.”

A new headquarters of more than 2000sqm: a historic building completely renovated and converted into a highly technological and sustainable multipurpose campus, with more than twenty study rooms and classrooms and an interior design project by Pininfarina.

Inauguration a.y. 2021/22 Stauffer Academy and Stauffer Labs

and opening of the new location of the Stauffer Center for Strings.
Friday, Oct. 1, 2021

REGISTRATION OPEN AS OF JUNE 28