Cellist Maura Rickenbach, born in Lugano in 1997, performs regularly as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician in major concert halls and has received numerous awards.
She began her cello studies with Marina Modesti and continued with Taisuke Yamashita at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana, where she completed her Pre-College studies. Maura obtained her Bachelor’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in the class of Elena Cheah, and continued her education as an Erasmus student at the Conservatoire de Paris with Marc Coppey and Michel Strauss.
She recently completed both a Master’s degree in Performance and a Master’s degree in Music Pedagogy at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in the class of Thomas Grossenbacher. Together with her Turicum Quartet, she is currently pursuing a Graduate Course at the Hochschule für Musik Basel with Rainer Schmidt and Silvia Simionescu.
Maura has participated in numerous masterclasses with distinguished cellists such as Natalia Gutman, Ivan Monighetti, László Fenyő, Maria Kliegel, Peter Bruns, Danjulo Ishizaka, and Miklós Perényi, held at renowned institutions including the Cello Academy Rutesheim and the Académie Ravel.
She has won prizes in several competitions, among them the Competition for Contemporary Music at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, the Swiss Youth Music Competition, and the Antonio Salieri International Competition.
As a soloist, Maura has performed with the Orchestra Arcadia, the Orchestra da Camera del Locarnese, and the Master Orchestra Verona.
She has gained extensive orchestral experience, having been an academy member of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich during the 2022/23 season under Paavo Järvi, as well as of the Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg in the 2018/19 season. She regularly performs as a substitute with leading Swiss orchestras, including the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, and the Zürcher Kammerorchester. In 2021, she won the audition for the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester.
A passionate chamber musician, Maura is a founding member of the Zurich-based Turicum Quartet, an active and internationally successful ensemble, awarded Second Prize at the Szymanowski International Competition in 2023.
Maura has appeared at festivals such as Septembre Musical, Ticino Musica, Mizmorim Festival, Boswiler Sommer, Musica nel Mendrisiotto, and the MITO Festival, and has collaborated with musicians including Kian Soltani, Ilya Gringolts, Andreas Janke, and Ivan Podyomov.