Francesco Cagnasso has been serving as an assistant at the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Michael Sanderling since January 2024. Additionally, he holds the same position at the German State Philharmonic of Rhineland-Palatinate, under Chief Conductor Michael Francis, since the 2022/23 season. He was a scholarship holder at the Conducting Forum (German Conductors Forum) from 2021 to 2023, and in 2022, he was a finalist at the Critical Orchestra Berlin.
He has been invited to participate in the Malko Competition For Young Conductors 2024 in Copenhagen, where he will conduct the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.
Francesco Cagnasso, born in Italian-speaking Switzerland, successfully completed his Bachelor’s degree in Orchestral Conducting at the University of Music and Theatre Hamburg under Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr in 2021. Since then, he has been living in Zurich, where he has been studying in the renowned class of Prof. Johannes Schlaefli and Prof. Christoph Mathias Mueller in the Master Orchestral Conducting program at the Zurich University of the Arts.
Francesco Cagnasso has participated in numerous masterclasses, receiving valuable insights from renowned conductors such as Daniele Gatti, Tomas Netopil, Johannes Schlaefli, Nicolás Pasquet, Pavel Baleff, and Ole Kristian Ruud.
He has assisted conductors such as François Xavier Roth with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne (2022 – Momentum: our future, now), Kent Nagano with the Symphony Orchestra of the University of Music and Theatre Hamburg, and for the 2016/17 season, Nicolas Fink and Philippe Savoy with the Swiss Youth Choir.
Francesco Cagnasso gained opera experience on various stages and through productions, including two chamber operas by Leoš Janáček: “Twice Alexander” and “Tears of a Knife” in 2022. Following this, he conducted the operetta “The White Horse Inn” at the Fricktal Stage (Basel). Additionally, he conducted performances of “The Gypsy Baron” in 2023 and “The Duchess of Chicago” in 2024 at the Sursee City Theater (Switzerland).
Throughout his career, he has gained experience with various orchestras in Europe, including the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the German State Philharmonic of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, the Mecklenburg State Theatre Schwerin, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Southwest German Philharmonic Konstanz, the Hradec Králové Symphony Orchestra (Czech Republic), the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra (Greece), the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra Zlin (Czech Republic), the Philharmonie Baden-Baden, the Regensburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Rousse Philharmonic Orchestra (Bulgaria).