Winner of the 2023 ARD International Music Competition in Munich, where she received both First Prize and the Audience Prize, Swiss harpist Tjasha Gafner is recognised as one of the most promising musicians of her generation. In 2023, Die Zeit named her among the “30 personalities under 30 who are shaping Germany”, while the Süddeutsche Zeitung described her playing as “an irresistible blend of filigree elegance and musical presence”.

Born in Lausanne in 1999 into a family of artists – the daughter of a pianist and a photographer – Tjasha Gafner first studied the violin before turning to the harp at the age of seven. She studied at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne in the class of Letizia Belmondo, where she obtained a Master of Soloist Performance, before continuing her studies at The Juilliard School in New York with Nancy Allen. She completed her training with a degree in music pedagogy at the Haute École de Musique de Genève with Sandrine Chatron. Since 2026, she has been teaching at the École de musique de Pully.

Winner of more than twenty international awards in less than ten years, she has notably received First Prizes at the Félix Godefroid, Suoni d’Arpa and Martine Géliot competitions, as well as the Max D. Jost Prize, the title of Public Media Soloist of the Year 2022, the Leenaards Scholarship, and, most recently, the WEMAG Soloist Prize at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 2025.

Since the age of 11, Tjasha Gafner has performed as a soloist in some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Berlin Philharmonie, Tonhalle Zürich, Vienna Konzerthaus, Herkulessaal in Munich, and the Elbphilharmonie Laeiszhalle in Hamburg. She is invited both as a soloist and as Principal Harp by numerous orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the London Mozart Players, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester. Her performances are regularly broadcast on BR-Klassik, France Musique, Swiss Radio and Television, and Medici.

Invited to prestigious festivals such as the Verbier Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rheingau Festival, Lucerne Festival and Gstaad Menuhin Festival, Tjasha Gafner stands out for her creative approach to the repertoire. Passionate about transcriptions, she adapts major works from the piano and symphonic repertoire for the harp. Her new album – entirely devoted to her own arrangements of Bach, Haydn and Mozart – received a 10/10 rating from the prestigious magazine Harp Column. Tjasha also collaborates with several contemporary composers, including Heinz Holliger, Ziyi Tao, Laurent Coulomb and Daniel Schnyder, who have dedicated works to her.

Fascinated by interdisciplinary projects, she has been working since 2020 with the theatre company 2B Company, with which she regularly tours French-speaking Europe. Convinced of the social and cultural role of music, Tjasha performs in public schools and hospitals in Switzerland. She also takes part in educational and humanitarian projects in Argentina and the Congo, combining teaching, cultural exchange and the creation of instruments from recycled materials.