Biography

Xavier Dayer’s music was revealed during a performance in 1998 at the Festival Archipel, in Geneva, with the Ensemble Contrechamps. In only a few years, he became renowned on the international music scene. Born in 1972 in Geneva, where he studied with Eric Gaudibert, he then pursued his studies in Paris (IRCAM) with Tristan Murail and Brian Ferneyhough. He is recipient of a number of prizes, including the Bürgi-Willert Foundation Prize, awarded by Heinz Holliger and the Sandoz Foundation’s FEMS Prize, awarded by Henri Dutilleux. Resident at the Académie de France, in Rome – Villa Médicis in 2008-2009, he was named professor of composition at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) in 2009.

Greatly solicited in Switzerland and abroad, he has collaborated with the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the SWR-Vokalensemble in Stuttgart, the Swiss Chamber Concerts and the Niew Ensemble in Amsterdam. Xavier Dayer is very attached to poet Fernando Pessoa, whose texts he used for his chamber opera Le Marin, as well as for several other vocal works. His latest opera, Les contes de la lune vague après la pluie, was premiered at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 2015. He is currently writing two new operas, commissioned by the Zurich Opera and the Konzert Theater in Bern for 2018.