About Us
The Orchestra
The University Orchestra Polyphonia Zürich is a symphonic student orchestra made up of students and staff from ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. Each semester during the lecture period, we rehearse a program from the classical orchestral repertoire and perform them in concerts at the end of the semester. Since our founding, we have combined the joy of making music together with the ambition to interpret classical works at a satisfying musical level.
Our approximately 60 members come from a wide range of academic disciplines and study programs, from Bachelor’s to PhD. We also have many international students among us, so promoting exchange and interaction is especially important to us. We rehearse during the semester in English, every Wednesday from 6 to 9 p.m. The rehearsal schedule can be found here.
Our Conductor
Hadži Gregor Bugar’s credo is: “With freedom, anything is possible.” Mutual appreciation, respect, trust, and honesty create an atmosphere of confidence in which music becomes a means of expressing freedom—and the gates of heaven open.
Born in 1997 in Locarno (Ticino, Switzerland), his musical journey began at the age of four with violin lessons at the Scuola Popolare di Musica di Locarno.
In 2014, thanks to the Quartetto Archetipo, he discovered the viola and began studying with Sara Martínez Martínez. In 2022, he completed his Master of Arts in Music Performance (Classical) at the Lucerne University of Music with Isabel Charisius, with orchestral conducting as a minor subject under Clemens Heil. He was supported by the Hirschmann Scholarship.
As a violist, he served as principal in various Swiss orchestras and appeared as a soloist with Jeunesses Musicales de Suisse, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Graubünden, the Ars Excelsis Ensemble, and the Seetal Orchestra.
His conducting career began at the age of 13 with the ENIGMA Ensemble. Since then, it has developed through numerous experiences with orchestras in Switzerland, Serbia, Italy, Germany, and Bulgaria, and through guidance from Rüdiger Bohn, Martin Åkerwall, Johannes Schlaefli, Christoph-Mathias Mueller, Clemens Heil, Franz Schaffner, Liutauras Balciunas, Pierangelo Gelmini, Marc Kissòczy, Marco Boni, and Fabian Enders.
From 2019 to 2023, he assisted David Engel-Duss in musical productions such as Beauty and the Beast, Cats, West Side Story, Hair, Phantom of the Opera, and Made in Dagenham.
In addition to Polyphonia, Gregor Bugar is currently conductor of the Ars Excelsis Ensemble, the AUFTAKT youth project of the Central Switzerland Youth Symphony Orchestra (ZJSO), the Bern Student Orchestra, and the Kriens-Horw Orchestra. Since September 2023, he has served as Artistic Director of the ZJSO.
