Welcome to the Astona Summer Music Academy for highly-gifted, young string players!
Astona 2022 online
Saturday, July 9 to Saturday, July 23
Astona is an international Summer Music Academy, accompanying many students on their path to a musical career and providing them 14 days with a free and protected space in which to work and grow and enjoy.
We are going online, free of all Corona restrictions.
We offer a comprehensive range of online courses and a typical Astona sense of togetherness, as we have known it for 35 years:
- Private instrumental lessons (6 lessons of 60 minutes each in two weeks)
- Class lessons
- Theme seminars
- Reflection sessions
- Internal house concert performances
- Public streaming concerts
- "The Challenge", an internal, voluntary competition
- "Quizz Fizz": Who will win?
- and a lot of fun!
Read the review of Astona ONLINE 2021.
Acceptance and participation in ASTONA ONLINE 2022 automatically guarantees acceptance at Astona 2023.
Since we cannot do chamber music and piano accompaniment online, we regret that we are unable to offer a piano course this year.
All the information is here:
Astona ONLINE 2022
Founder (1988) and director
Nancy Chumachenco
Application fee: Course fee:
CHF 50 CHF 300
Application Deadline:
May 2nd, 2022 - extended until June 3, 2022
ASTONA ONLINE will take place this summer no matter what Covid decides to do!
I took up the cello because I heard another boy playing it and fell in love with the sound. My teacher was Nancy Chumachenco. She expected a lot
right from day one, and if you were a talented student she would go full steam ahead, not for just 30 or 60 minutes a week but a whole lot more. There was chamber music, too, and every year she
would organise a summer school with students from other countries. Meeting kids from places like South Africa, Finland and the US as a twelve-year-old was so exciting, and it gave us
a network of friends and colleagues to draw on as we got older. Not many people are lucky enough to be guided by someone like Nancy Chumachenco from the first time they pick up their
instrument.
The Strad, 2/2020
Christian Poltéra, born 1977, Astona participant 1988 - 1993. Renowned international Cello soloist and chamber music player, Professor at Lucerne University.
At the age of 15 to 17, I had the good fortune to attend Astona International. I can attest to the fact that these years were the most formative in my musical education.
Philippe Jordan, born 1974,
Astona participant 1990 - 1992,
Musica Director: Paris Opéra
Principal Conductor: Vienna Symphony Orchestra
Our colleague of many years, Robert Rozek, violin, passed away on Sunday, August 22, 2021.
We will remember him as a fine teacher. Nancy Chumacheno
Astona International on the Swiss National News, July 21, 2018
I'd heard only positive things about Astona before I came and now that I’ve been there myself, I can with 100% certainty say that they’re true. I’ve learnt a lot, some of the things that I expected to learn and some skills that I did not realise I would. Astona is certainly an experience that I’ll never forget. I greatly appreciate all your hard work and that of your fellow teachers. Thank you for an amazing opportunity!
Student from Norway, 16, Participant 2019
„After the intermission, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's octet for strings, followed by frenetic, well-deserved applaus and standing ovations. Seldom does one encounter so much energy and enthusiasm as was audible and evident in all aspects of Astona."
Zuger Zeitung 2019