About Our 2009 Harp Island Tutor...

Florence Sitruk won more than seven national and international top prizes (Paris, Brussels, Indiana University), among which the 1st prize in the Rome International Competition Valentino Bucchi for Music of the 20th century in 2000 established her on the international platform. She went then on to win the selection of the “Debüt at the Deutschland Radio” at the Berlin Philharmonic as first German harpist ever.She was also the first harpist to be nominated for the Eurovision Contest of Classical Music in Brussels by the European Broadcasting Union.The current concert season - which also marks 25-years of harp playing - has taken Florence Sitruk to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Brisbane and Tasmania, with a solo recital tour throughout Estonia, to Turqui, as well as to the Musikhalle Hamburg, to the WDR Cologne and to the Festival Heidelberger Frühling.Reinvitations will take her for masterclasses and concerts in 2007/2008 to the Festival Les Muséiques Basel, to Tokyo University Japan, with Ivan Monighetti, Cellist, and the premiere of the double concerto by Krzysztof Meyer to Vilnius, to Jerusalem, to the Festival Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and MDR, to Estonia and St Petersburg, and again to the St. Christopher Festival Vilnius where she has newly been appointed artistic director for harp.

As a soloist she has played with several orchestras – Dresden Philharmonics, Cairo Opera Orchestra, Freiburg Baroque Soloists, Festival Strings Lucerne, Stuttgardt Chamber Orchestra, Lithuanian Philharmonic Orchestra etc. She has given concerts in Brazil, in Berlin Philharmonics, in Rudolfinum in Prague, in Metropolitan Museum in New York, in the Baltic countries and elsewhere. She has been the first to perform new pieces by such composers as György Kurtįg, Ami Maayani, Ferenc Farkas and Bernd Franke.

Florence Sitruk is professor of harp at the Haute Ecole de Musique of Geneva, and since her appointment in 2005 the youngest professor in her field.It is a position she also holds at the Lithuanian Music Academy Vilnius/Lithuania since the age of 26, where she has established in pioneering work a successful harp department with the help of the German government and the DAAD.

The Harp Society of Tasmania is delighted that Prof Sitruk has returned for her third "Harp Island".