David Philip Hefti was born in Switzerland in 1975 and studied at the music academies of Zurich and Karlsruhe, where his teachers included Wolfgang Rihm, Rudolf Kelterborn and Cristóbal Halffter. He is active today as both composer and conductor. Hefti’s ca 90 works encompass orchestral, vocal and chamber music. He has written works for artists such as Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Lawrence Power, Hartmut Rohde, Baiba Skride, Jan Vogler and Antje Weithaas, and he has worked with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Berlin Baroque Soloists, the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin and the Ensemble Modern. His works have been performed by conductors such as Peter Eötvös, Cornelius Meister, Kent Nagano, Jonathan Nott and David Zinman, and he has been invited to participate at festivals including Wien Modern, Beijing Modern, Ultraschall Berlin, the Lucerne Festival and the Suntory Festival in Tokyo. Hefti was awarded the Composer Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the Hindemith Prize and the Composer Award of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA). In May 2017, his first opera, Anna’s Mask, was given its world première at the St. Gallen Theatre under Otto Tausk. And in November 2018, Hefti’s second music-theatre piece, The Snow Queen, was premièred in the Tonhalle in Zurich. The title role was sung by the soprano Mojca Erdmann, while Hefti himself conducted the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra.