Samuel Porchet

1956 -

Samuel Porchet, a pianist, conductor, and administrator, resides in Vallorbe, Switzerland, where he has worked since 2003 in project management. He has worked in music and arts management for over twenty years.

From 1984 to 1989, he was the campus manager at the Educandario Nordestino Adventista in Belém de Maria, Brazil, a semi-public institution that offers high school and college degrees. During his first two years there, he was head of the music conservatory, a school with 120 students.

Beginning in 1989, Porchet was General Manager of the Conservatoire De L'Quest Vaudois in Nyon/Morges, Switzerland, a school of 1600 students and 120 teachers that offered 2300 classes a week in music, dance, and theater. He was in charge of administrative and pedagogical efficiency, finances, developing human resources, including computer implementation, and promoting events.

In his time there, he oversaw a merging of music schools in Rolle, Gland, and Nyon in 1993 and a merger of that group (known as Nyon) with a school in Morges in 2001. He also established a foundation to assist underprivileged children before he left in 2003 to accept his present position.

A linguist, Porchet speaks French, English, and Portuguese and understands German, Spanish, and Italian. He is a pianist with a music diploma from the Conservatory of Geneva (1981) and a Virtuosity diploma from the Swiss Pedagogical Society (1984) in Zurich, the equivalent of a Ph.D. He studied piano with Siegfried Schulze and Wilhelm Kempf and conducting with Leon Barzin, director of London's Covent Garden,

Porchet received a French teaching diploma, "Alliance Francaise," in Paris (1976) and completed a French baccalaureate in philosophy and mathematics at Grenoble (1977). He also earned a diploma in business administration in Lausanne in 2004.

From 1979 to 1984, Porchet taught piano at the Vallee de Joux School of Music and the Conservatory of Rolle. In those years he started, established, and managed the Conservatory of the "Nord Vaudois." He also toured as a performer in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy and won medals and prizes in piano improvisation.

Porchet received the Concert Hall Recognition Medal in Brazil in 1988 and the gold medal in performance at San Barolomeo al Mare in 1995. He was president of the Swiss School of Music Association, Lausanne, from 1994 to 2002.

ds/2005/12

Sources: Letter and career information, Samuel Porchet, 13 March 2005; Online sources (2012).