The Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT) was founded in 2003 with the aim of supporting young international musicians of proven talent in that difficult time when they find themselves on the threshold of a professional music career.
The co-founders of the Trust, in which the famous pianist Mitsuko Uchida participates as a councilor, were Ilaria Borletti and her husband Franco Buitoni (1934-2016), who did so much for the musical life of Perugia as President of the Amici della Musica for over thirty ‘years, from 1985 to 2016.
To date, the BBT has awarded over 110’s Awards is Fellowships , in favor of both instrumentalists and singers as well as chamber ensembles, each coming from all over the world, from Europe as well as from the United States and the Far East.
Since 2017 the biennial “Franco Buitoni Award” has been established in recognition of particular career merits, a prize awarded in 2017 to the composer György Kurtág and in 2019 to the Quartet of Cremona. In 2016 the Lyskamm Quartet received a special chamber music award named in memory of Claudio Abbado.
Since 2019 the Trust is also dedicated to BBT Communities (“Music Changing Lives”), projects aimed at disadvantaged and socially marginalized young people, in London as in Naples, in Berlin as in Lombardy, in Rwanda and in the occupied Palestinian territories.
From the concerts in 2005 by the pianist Jonathan Biss, the Jerusalem String Quartet and the violinist Viviane Hagner, and up to the third concert in Perugia by the pianist Beatrice Rana (2019), a total of about sixty concerts were held by over 40 BB Trust winners in be part of the Friends of Music billboards.