Other important competitions he had in his life were the competition of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow (1997), Concertino Praga (2001), the Timofej-Dokschitzer-Competition in Vilnius (2002), the “Prague spring” (2003), and Maurice André Competition of the City of Paris (2003). In 2008 he was included in the BBC New Generation Artists Scheme.
Giuliano Sommerhalder was 19 years old when he played in Claudio Abbado’s Orchestra Mozart in Bologna, and a year later, Lorin Maazel chose him as the solo trumpeter for his Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana in Valencia. During 2006-2011 he was assigned to the same position at the Gewandhaus orchestra Leipzig under Riccardo Chailly, before he became principal trumpet of the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam under Mariss Jansons.
Giuliano Sommerhalder is the 6th generation of a German-Russian musical dynasty, on the maternal side, was born in 1985 in Zurich and grew up in Ticino and in Italy. He studied with Pierluigi Salvi in Como and with Max Sommerhalder in Detmold. Important suggestions he owes to Maurice André, Eric Aubier, Stephen Burns, Pierre Thibaud, Hans Gansch and James Thompson.
As a soloist on the modern as well as historical instruments Giuliano Sommerhalder performed in the whole world, the Musikverein Vienna, the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Wigmore Hall, at the Lucerne Festival, the City of London Festival and the Schleswig-Holstein music festival, with all the Symphony orchestras of the BBC, the majority of German radio Symphony orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Zurich chamber orchestra, the Munich chamber orchestra, the Lithuanian chamber orchestra, the Moscow Soloists and the Chamber Orchestra of Basel.
He recorded Bach’s 2nd Brandenburg Concert for Decca and two CDs with first recordings of romantic trumpet concertos, Romantic Virtuosity and Amilcare Ponchielli Concertos.