Georg Grün becomes the new Artistic Director of the Marktoberdorf International Chamber Choir Competition

The Marktoberdorf International Chamber Choir Competition will take place this year from June 6 to 10, 2025. The last competition for Artistic Director Prof. Jürgen Budday. In 2015, he took over the artistic direction of the festival, which he led with great reliability and optimistic confidence as a gentleman, calming influence and “stronghold”, especially in the difficult coronavirus times.

After this year's competition, there will be a change in artistic direction. After twelve years and six extremely successful festivals, Prof. Jürgen Budday is handing over the “baton” to Prof. Georg Grün, Saarbrücken, an internationally renowned and experienced choral conductor. Georg Grün can count himself among the most sought-after choral conductors and choral sound specialists internationally. He founded the Saarbrücken Chamber Choir in 1990 and is still its artistic director today. With this ensemble, he has won the most important international and national choral competitions, performed at many renowned music festivals in Germany and abroad and regularly produces CDs for Saarländischer Rundfunk and the Carus and Rondeau labels.

From 2000 to 2013, Georg Grün held a professorship for choral conducting at the Mannheim University of Music, with whose newly founded chamber choir he also won numerous international prizes. In 2012, he moved to the Saar University of Music as a professor and at the same time took over the direction of the BachChor Saarbrücken. In 2015, he established the now internationally successful “HfM Summer School” for choral conducting, of which he is still the artistic director today. Georg Grün travels the world as a guest conductor, guest professor, juror and lecturer at international master classes for choral conducting.

“The chamber choir competition in Marktoberdorf had a decisive influence on my musical career. From 1995 to 2013, I took part in the competition three times, and the KammerChor Saarbrücken also performed with me at Musica Sacra International in 1997 and 2000. Three times I was allowed to chair the International Jury and three times the International Masterclass and its conducting competition. I know the festival through and through and am very much looking forward to the honorable task of being able to direct it artistically in the near future,” says Georg Grün.

The board and management of MODfestivals, as well as the entire team, warmly welcome Georg Grün and wish him luck and happiness in his new role. We can eagerly await the first festival under his direction in 2027.