Artistic Director

Bernhard Furchner, born in 1957, co-founded the Choir of Nations in 2006 and has been its Artistic Director/Conductor ever since.

The son of a father from Berlin and a mother from former Haindorf (Sudetenland), he grew up in Köniz, Canton Bern, and began playing the violin at the age of nine. After studying musicology and education at the University of Bern, he worked as a primary school and violin teacher as well as a secondary school music teacher. He also acted as the leader of the string quartet Hist'Artists, the folk music group Fiori Musicali and as concertmaster of the Grenchen City Orchestra. For ten years, he led the Berner Laienensemble founded by him for music holidays with a holistic approach to learning.

To create a basis for interdisciplinary productions and diverse education-based event concepts, he founded the institut für kultur und musik in Solothurn in 1993. It offers cultural management for social innovation and is the cradle of the Choir of Nations. As part of a project at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland in 1999, where he worked in the fields of methodology and didactics of music and interculturality, he organised internships abroad in Cuba and was involved in university cooperation. His deep interest in intercultural dialogue and in the promotion of intercultural competence as well as in educational programmes for sustainable development and intercultural pedagogy led to the founding of Sociami International® in 2007, which also offers sustainable trips to Cuba, where he spends extended periods of time every year. His musical relationships with Cuba, including with the top choir Schola Cantorum Coralina, inspire his work with the Choir of Nations, and choir trips to Havana are part of his programme. His long-time donation project Violins for Cuba, which sent donated string instruments to Cuba and also had them repaired there, is a further link between his musical training and his concern for sustainable intercultural promotion.

As Artistic Director/Conductor of the Choir of Nations, he personally directs all the choirs at each location, with regular support from choral conducting assistants. His tasks include supporting the development of Choir of Nations at new locations and ensuring the quality of the Choir of Nations’ label. They also include organisational tasks, leading choir rehearsals and vocal training, selecting, arranging and composing songs for the Choir of Nations' song programme, leading orchestra rehearsals and conducting concerts.