Music Jury

Johannes Rühl is an ethnomusicologist and curator of music programmes. Having worked in management roles at the cultural offices in Rottweil and Freiburg, he became director of the Accademia Teatro Dimitri. He went on to research the musical traditions of the Alpine region at the Lucerne School of Music. For a number of years, he also curated the programme for the Alpentöne music festival in Altdorf in Switzerland. Johannes Rühl manages the music programmes for numerous cultural institutions and festivals in Switzerland. He has been on the moderator team for the Rudolstadt-Festival for many years now. Until 2025, he was a member and president of the jury for the Swiss Music Prize awarded by the Federal Office of Culture. Johannes Rühl has lived in the Onsernone Valley in Ticino for over 15 years. He set up the casadirosa.ch artist residence there and continues to run it.

Isabelle Sire ist Co-Direktorin von Diffusion Prod in Straßburg, einer Booking- und Produktionsagentur (Ange, Julie Doiron, KG…). Zuvor leitete sie die Agentur Rose Macadam und arbeitete mit Agenturen wie F2F Music, Bleu Citron und der Fondation Royaumont zusammen. Sie arbeitet sowohl mit Independent-Künstler:innen als auch mit etablierten Acts wie Bertrand Belin, Jello Biafra, Fugu, Didier Super, Serge Teyssot-Gay, Magyd Cherfi und Barbara Carlotti.
2021 trat sie Diffusion Prod bei, um die Strasbourg Music Week ins Leben zu rufen und zu koordinieren – ein grenzüberschreitendes Showcase- und Branchentreffen, das sie gegründet hat. In der Region Grand Est engagiert sie sich für Musikprojekte wie das Popnetzwerk Grabuge, Le Chaînon Manquant und war auch Programmplanerin des Festivals Summerlied. Die dritte Ausgabe der Strasbourg Music Week fand vom 26. bis 29. Mai 2025 statt.

Born in Dresden in 1980, Silvana Mehnert started her music career at the age of eight. She was in the Philharmonic Children’s Choir and played piano at the Heinrich-Schütz-Konservatorium in Dresden. She co-founded the ‘nonets’ a cappella group in 1996, which went on to be called MEDLZ and become one of the most successful female a cappella pop bands in Europe. Alongside her work with MEDLZ, she worked as a singer, composer and arranger with artists like The Cashbags, Ference Husta and The Souldiers. Starting in 2014, she released three studio albums under the name MISS ROCKESTER, including a German orchestral album in collaboration with the Elbland Philharmonic Orchestra Saxony. She left MEDLZ in 2024 after 25 years to focus on her new solo project, SMILLA (German retro pop). She continues to appear on stage as a singer in various productions (e.g. at the venues Landesbühnen Sachsen and Comödie Dresden) and also works as a vocal coach.

Alexander Hässler, known as Käptn Hässler, has been firmly rooted in the South Baden cultural and event scene for over 15 years. As a DJ deeply involved in club and subculture, he knows both sides of the mixer: stage and production. His professional journey has taken him from small club nights to large events with over 30,000 attendees. He has worked as a booker, production manager, and program curator for festivals like the Zelt-Musik-Festival Freiburg and agencies such as Vaddi Concerts. In January 2024, he founded his Käptn Hässler Agency, focusing on the electronic music scene as an organizer, promoter, consultant, and DJ. His formats like FUSE Freiburg and Elternabend stand for carefully curated line-ups and community. Musically, Käptn Hässler hardly recognizes genre boundaries: from techno to heavy metal, from cabaret to pop – his musical diversity is broad. He loves the unknown, the new, and exciting newcomers where something new is emerging.