Tjasha Gafner

Tjasha Gafner, a harpist born in 1999 in Switzerland, graduated from the Juilliard School in New York under Nancy Allen after obtaining a Master Soloist degree with Letizia Belmondo at the Haute École de Musique in Lausanne. In September 2023, Tjasha won both the 1st Prize and the Audience Award at the prestigious ARD Competition in Munich. With more than 20 awards to her name, she notably won first prizes at the Félix Godefroid Competition (Belgium, 2012), Suoni d’Arpa (Italy, 2014), and the Martine Géliot Competition (France, 2016). In 2021, she was honored as “Soloist 2022” at the MFP (Médias Francophones Publics) Competition, received the Max D. Jost Prize, and was awarded the Leenaards Cultural Grant. In 2023, she was named one of the 30 outstanding personalities under 30 in Germany by the newspaper Die Zeit.

Since the age of 10, Tjasha has regularly performed in recitals throughout Europe in legendary venues such as the Tonhalle Zürich and the Konzerthaus in Vienna. She is invited to perform as a soloist with orchestras—for instance, with the Paris Orchestral Ensemble, the Ensemble of Young Virtuosos of New York, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne, and the London Mozart Players. She has been featured on programs by Radio Télévision Suisse, BR-Klassik, and France Musique, and recorded her first CD at the age of 18. In 2021, she recorded two more albums in a duo with flutist Héléna Macherel—the first released on the American label Orpheus Classical and the second on Claves. In 2022, she gave her first masterclass during a solo tour in Argentina, and in 2023, she traveled to the Congo to perform, teach, and build instruments from recycled materials.

Since 2020, Tjasha has been working with the theatre company 2B Company, frequently touring with them in French-speaking countries. She contributes to the expansion of the harp repertoire by creating her own transcriptions and collaborates with composers such as Constantin Macherel, Ziyi Tao, Jake Safirstein, and Laurent Coulomb, who have dedicated works to her.