Nelly Sturm is a professional musician who specialises in early music. She plays recorder and historical bassoon. While focusing on medieval, baroque, and classical European repertoire, she has always been fascinated by non-European musical traditions. In 2010, she completed her diploma thesis on the transmission of Armenian liturgical music. Although this tradition relied on oral transmission for centuries, Sturm’s project examined the influence of Western musical elements (such as polyphony and notation) since the nineteenth century.

Since 2011, she has attended several practical courses for Indian and Persian music, especially North Indian classical styles and modal improvisation, with Kenneth Zuckerman at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel. During her POLY fellowship, she was in exchange with the Greek Orthodox sisters of the monastery Dionysios Trikkis and Stagon (Germany). She is also taking lessons in Byzantine chant in order to expand her knowledge of Eastern liturgical music traditions as well as the variety of musical conceptions centering on modality and its systematization (octoechoes).