Mersson Boris

* 1921

Born on October 6th, 1921 in Berlin of Swiss parents with Russian antecedents, Boris Mersson is a citizen of Montreux. His family settled in Geneva in 1923. The young Boris was five when he began to study piano and some violin with his father, musician of the OSR. At ten, he began giving concerts, whilst pursuing his pianistic training for more than six years, with Isidor Karr in Geneva, then at the Lausanne Conservatory with Henri Stierlin-Vallon (professional class). At the same time he studied theory and didactics with masters such as Dènèrèaz, Fornerod, Appia. Boris Mersson also studied conducting with Hermann Schrerchen in Zurich and Herbert von Karajan in Lucerne. A polyvalent musician and self-taught composer, he pursued an artistic career on four fronts: conducting, performing, teaching and composing. This last activity has earned him many distinctions from, among others, the City of Zurich, the SSR, the Radio Community of French-speaking programmes and, finally, the international composition prize for guitar-solo, awarded unanimously by  Radio-France (Paris I). Following his pedagogical vocation since the early Seventies, Mersson has taught piano, improvisation and sight-reading at the Cantonal Gymnasium and Zurich Conservatory for nearly twenty years. He is a longtime resident of Thalwil, performs as soloist and in chamber music and continues teaching.