A total of almost 200 trombonists from all over the world accepted the invitation from the IPV and the Weimar University of Music. The IPV Solo Competition took place for the first time as part of the IPV Symposium from March 5 to 8. 77 young trombone soloists from 19 countries performed in front of a jury. The three first prizes for each winner consisted of a high-quality instrument and a solo performance at the IPV Symposium 2019.

The 17-year-old Slovenian Matej Stih won Category I for the youngest players. With the Courtois Prize, he now receives a new, customized tenor trombone from Antoine Courtois, Paris, worth several thousand euros. The jury awarded two 1st prizes in the surprisingly strong category II (18 to 21 years): The Yamaha prize, and with it a new tenor trombone from the same brand, went to 20-year-old Tolga Akman from Turkey.

Another brand new Vincent Bach tenor trombone was won by 19-year-old Portuguese Marco Rafael Ferreira Rodrigues with his Bach Prize. No prize was awarded in age category III (22 years and older).

Born in 1998, Marco Rafael Ferreira Rodrigues joined David Bruchez's trombone class at Zurich University of the Arts in 2016. He has already won numerous first prizes at international competitions. Since 2017, he has been a permanent member of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich as a trombonist at a young age.

The members of the jury were Carsten Svanberg (Chairman, Denmark), Zoltan Kiss (Hungary), Fabrice Millischer (France), Mayumi Shimizu (Japan) and Jamie Williams (USA).

At the end of the latest Sessions-Stubete at the Progr in Bern, Indie Suisse President Andreas Ryser, Anja Illmaier from Intakt Records and Matthias Stürmer, Managing Director of the Parliamentary Group for Digital Sustainability, calculate what income an artist can expect on Spotify. What is rather surprising in view of the notorious complaints about the collapse of the music business: Ryser interprets the result with confidence. Ultimately, a title streamed on the popular platform generates revenues that are comparable to those of a traditional CD. However, there is a problem: if an artist sells a CD, they receive all of the revenue immediately; if, as on Spotify, the actual streams are paid for, the revenue is distributed over the entire period of use. The consequence, according to Ryser, is that there will have to be banks or labels that advance the money to the musician. In fact, it is becoming apparent that the industry is moving towards such a model again.

With Spotify and streaming as the most important future source of income for music creators, the Sessions-Stubete, an event organized by Musikförderung Bern and Sonart - Musikschaffende Schweiz, has arrived in the foreseeable future. The starting point, however, was the phenomenon of illegal downloads and the question of whether they should play a role in the current revision of the national Copyright Act (URG). Nobody at the Progr had a single good word to say about the draft of the revised law. It does not include blocks for anonymous piracy sites, civil law tools against uploaders or remuneration for social media use. But even the technical quality of the draft was heavily criticized by the experts present.

Whether illegal downloads will still play a role at all in the future in view of the change in user behavior was also up for debate, however. At the start of the event, Anja Illmaier illustrated the damage that those affected still suspect is caused by this. The Intakt label has been making its entire catalog available on the Bandcamp platform for two years. One musician pointed out that his music was also being offered illegally by third parties. According to Illmaier, however, tracing the provider proved to be difficult. The research ultimately pointed to a server based in Togo. The provider did not respond to the request to remove the illegal offers - even with the support of Suisa. Such countermeasures are very costly, explained the label representative, and are usually ineffective anyway. Moreover, it is completely impossible for record companies to proactively search the net for illegal offers of their products. Intakt estimates that such piracy results in an annual loss of income of around CHF 10,000 for the musician concerned. However, such a calculation was received skeptically by the Progr.

The moderator of the Sessions-Stubete was Christoph Trummer, President of the Swiss Pop-Rock Association of Musicians until the end of 2017, which was forced to merge with the Swiss Music Syndicate SMS (jazz and improvisation) and the Swiss Association of Musicians STV (new music) under pressure from the Federal Office of Culture. As a delegate of the cultural umbrella organization Suisseculture, Trummer worked on Federal Councillor Sommaruga's copyright working group (AGUR12). The working group was set up in 2012 and completed its work in April 2017. One of its topics was possible strategies to combat copyright abuse on the internet. In the end, there is not much left of this: on the one hand, rather non-binding incentives for hosters to prevent abuses of their platforms; these were deemed to be extremely amateurish from a legal perspective at the Sessions meeting. On the other hand, possibilities are to be created to identify uploaders. The Federal Council adopted the draft bill and the dispatch on November 22, 2017. It does not only deal with aspects that are of direct interest to the music industry. Other planned changes affect researchers and libraries, for example. The latter are to be able to use their collections for certain purposes without explicit permission from the rights holders. Performances are now protected by copyright for 70 years instead of the previous 50 years. The extension of the protection period is intended to give producers more time to amortize their investments.

In his introductory remarks, National Councillor Stefan Müller-Altermatt, President of the Parliamentary Group for Music PGM, described the "music promotion article", which was adopted in 2012: "Whatever ambiguities can be put into a constitutional article are contained in Art. 67a." A tailwind from the constitution had been hoped for, but now the implementation of music promotion goals is rubbing up against ambiguities, questions of responsibility and a lack of speed.

The PGM meeting focused in particular on talent development. Here, too, efforts seem to be making little headway. It is not that there are no support instruments for musically gifted children and young people, there are many; Müller-Altermatt even used the term "jungle" in the title of the event: "The battle for talent - promoting gifted children in a jungle of responsibilities". The report by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation from February 2017 refers to a considerable number of cantonal measures, but nevertheless concludes that there is a "low proportion of foreign students" at music universities.

"Everything has been said, everything has been written, everything has been scientifically proven, what is missing is the political will." This is how Hector Herzig summarized his view on the sluggish implementation of the constitutional article and the targeted promotion of gifted children in a short presentation. "Why," he continued, "is there no music promotion law when there has long been a sports promotion law?" The federal government had enforced three lessons of sport for children and young people in the cantons, so surely it should also be able to influence musical education.

At the subsequent panel discussion, Thomas Limacher, principal of the Lucerne Music School, reported on the support model there. Thanks to a private donation, the canton of Lucerne has been supporting talented musicians for four years. The most important thing is to support the talents, but to leave them in their traditional environment for as long as possible, because there, in the local music society or the regional music school, they act as beacons. As a rule, one talent soon leads to a second or third. It is therefore by no means a question of removing talent from regional structures as quickly as possible and continuing to promote it centrally. With this statement, Limacher touched on an issue that affects society as a whole, which makes the promotion of music even more difficult and which Herzig had already addressed: the associations, the backbone of cultural Switzerland, are eroding.

Michael Kaufmann, Director of the Lucerne University of Music, pointed out a paradoxical situation: The same political circles that have not funded talent promotion to date have criticized the low proportion of students with a Swiss admission certificate at music universities. However, in order for more young Swiss musicians to reach university level, talent promotion is needed.

Isabelle Chassot, Director of the Federal Office of Culture, countered that the 2016-2020 cultural message focused on the implementation of the Youth+Music program. The measures to promote talent must now be discussed for the next period. As the current structures are very different, regional centers should perhaps be considered. (In fact, the Swiss Music Council expects the 2021-2024 cultural message to be drawn up from summer 2018, which is why it has called on its members to submit proposals by March 29 on what the music sector should include in the cultural message).

When moderator Wolfgang Böhler asked whether federalism was the brake, Susanne Hardmeier, Secretary General of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK), replied that the commitment of those responsible in the cantons was huge and that the differences between the cantons were a wealth, not an obstacle. A great deal of activity there too, but no common solution in sight. Comments from the floor extended the list of unresolved issues: Rainer J. Schweizer emphasized that promoting gifted children begins with access to music and that Switzerland lags far behind when it comes to capturing children from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. And with regard to school music, Armon Caviezel asked what the EDK wanted to do to prepare teachers for Curriculum 21 in the subject of music.

All in all, there were far more questions than answers. National Councillor Müller-Altermatt put it in a nutshell: "If I were to go back to the Federal Assembly and push through a music promotion law, I wouldn't know how to solve this institutionally. Where should the leverage be placed between cantonal and federal competencies?"

Thomas Limacher summed up the basic mood of stagnation despite increasing urgency, helplessness and fatigue that was noticeable in many places quite tangibly: "We can continue with our funding program in the canton of Lucerne for another two years or so, then the previous, private funds will no longer be sufficient. If there is no help from politicians then, we will have to massively reduce the program or stop it."

Just one parliamentarian listened to these concerns from over thirty representatives of the music scene. Obviously, politicians' interest in musical issues is limited.

The treasures at the Paul Sacher Foundation Basel (PSS) never cease to impress. It could probably exhibit some of them at random and you would be fascinated by the aura of the autographs and testimonies. All the better when it concentrates on one composer or, as here, on a rather topical subject: "Re-Set". The subject - there are two subtitles in the documents - is appropriation, recourse and continuation in music and art since 1900. This is very popular in times of sampling and remixing, but there is a long tradition of this.

The PSS explores the theme in four rooms of the Tinguely Museum: in the case of other people's, the artist's own and folk music adaptations and in relation to popular art. A beautiful catalog with numerous knowledgeable and thoroughly readable articles accompanies the exhibition. Equipped with an iPad, visitors can set off to experience the exhibits in their sound form and thus deepen their impression.

First of all, there are the examples in which composers refer to colleagues from history. One could certainly fill an exhibition with the veneration of Bach alone (represented here by Webern, Kagel, Gubaidulina), but fortunately Machaut (with Birtwistle, Kurtág and Sciarrino), Gesualdo (with Stravinsky, Sciarrino and Klaus Huber), Beethoven (with Kagel) and Satie (via Debussy) are also featured. Schönberg's Piano Pieces op. 19 (a popular task for composition students) are represented in instrumentations by Rihm, Holliger and Younghi Pagh-Paan.

The second room provides an insight into the creative process, namely when composers edit, improve and rearrange their own works, as Stravinsky did with the Firebird tat or Webern with the Rilke songs. Boulez, Maderna, Ligeti or Rihm transplanted parts of one piece into another or pushed core ideas further. The PSS has every conceivable material at its disposal, so that it can document the various stages of the work meticulously and clearly.

Folk music then in the third hall, Eastern Yiddish songs by Milhaud and Stefan Wolpe, plus years of research by Bartók, Veress and Lutosławski and their transformation into compositions. This is sometimes very close to the sources, but in the case of Berio, Reich and Holliger, for example, it goes beyond them. Alb-Chehr the border to an imagined folk music. It is somewhat surprising to note a few absences here: Henze (who is also absent from the arrangements, for example with his biting orchestration of Wagner's The two grenadiers) or Globokar. It's as if all the political implications are being avoided.

Finally, the fourth room stands out, its title somewhat treacherous: "Subliminal elitism. Popularization and Nobilitization". Perhaps they wanted to put something popular on it and therefore resorted to film clips from Disney's Fantasia (with Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps) and Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (with Ligeti). But it has little to do with the theme. Accordingly, it stands isolated next to the other exhibits. Certainly there is something to discover there too, Beatles arrangements not only by Berio, but otherwise this part seems spongy, quickly soaked up, quickly expressed again. Above all, it becomes clear here that the exhibition, as diverse as it is, has few areas of friction and no explosive power. Of course, there are always some omissions to criticize, but it is telling what is almost completely absent here: the malicious and the abysmal, as if it had been avoided. This exhibition is very sweet.

Counterpoints would be necessary. At best, these could be found in the basement. The exhibition is preceded (and absent from the catalog) by the Tinguely Museum's contribution, a small show of works based on Duchamp's famous Urinoir. This does not quite fit in with the music exhibits. It may be that in the visual arts, as host Roland Wetzel said at the vernissage, "re-set" means something different than in music, but perhaps there would have been more conclusive examples - quite a few musicians referred to Duchamp. So there is still something left for another exhibition.

Jan-Friedrich Missfelder obtained his doctorate in 2008 at the Humboldt University of Berlin and has been a senior assistant at the University of Zurich since 2017. He will carry out his research project on the voice as a medium of communication in early modern society at the Department of History at the University of Basel from January 1, 2019. The project will analyze how songs and song pamphlets contributed to the formation of opinion and contemporary historical consciousness.

The University of Basel has been awarded five of the 39 new professorships granted by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) this year. They enable highly qualified young researchers to set up their own group and carry out an independent research project. As a result, the University will receive around 7.4 million francs in third-party funding.
 

For the eleventh time, the European Youth Choir Festival Basel brings together a selection of the best children's and youth choirs in Europe and seven young choirs from Switzerland. The choirs selected by an artistic committee come from Denmark, Finland, France, Israel, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Slovenia, Spain and Hungary. From Switzerland, the yodeling choir jutz.ch, incantanti from the
Bündnerland, Zik'Zag from Fribourg, the chamber choir from Muttenz High School and the host choirs Knaben- und Mädchenkantorei Basel and the Vivo youth choir from the Music Academy. The Drakensberg Boys Choir from South Africa with its 55 boys will set a special accent. It has been invited as a guest choir from overseas
and won over the jury with rousing performances and great musical skills.

The world-famous song of the same name from South Africa means "courageously looking forward". The festival organizers have also set themselves this goal for the current edition of the successful festival and have invented a whole series of new concert formats. For example, the 800 singers will meet after the
Opening concerts for the first rendezvous by candlelight and singing together in the open air. Later, performances that break all concert rules and bring singing into everyday life and those that allow the audience to help shape the program in a playful way entice the audience. On Saturday, the
audience in a "parade à l'envers" through all the singers lining the streets. Another new idea is the "youth choir ship". Singing workshops and events on the musical-cultural background of the Portuguese and Finns are offered on one-and-a-half-hour round trips. A special focus is placed on
the special concert "Swiss Songbridge". Following an international concept, the choirs from French-, Romansh- and German-speaking Switzerland put on a concert with many songs sung together, including three new compositions by Stefan Furter, Fabien Volery and Gion Andrea Casanova.

Photo: Sara Meier

EJCF 2014: Singe uf dr Strooss - Münsterplatz

The Youth Choir Festival can traditionally count on a great deal of support from the local population. Over 40 cooperation partners help to organize the festival, 800 volunteers are involved in the event, including 250 host families who provide accommodation for the 500 foreign guests. A supporting program promotes young talent
and gives 1500 children and young people from all over Switzerland the chance to present themselves in one of the three local matinees or to experience a singing day on the theme of "Africa" or "ABBA" together with the choirs from South Africa and Sweden. Festival director Kathrin Renggli says: "Elite is only created in
consistent promotion of the grassroots. The uniquely high standard at the Basel Festival is directly linked to the offer for the singing youth of Switzerland and the support of the population. Internationally, too, we must make a commitment to young, ambitious choral conductors if musical ability is to remain a value in the future.

Photo: Guido Schärli

EJCF 2016: Cor Infantil Amics de la Unió, Spain

The Youth Choir Festival can count on financial support from the Federal Office of Culture for the current cultural dispatch until 2021. Together with the equal contributions from the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft, the federal government is making it possible to hold this year's festival. Festival President
Elisabeth Schneider-Schneiter explains: "The Confederation's recognition is based on the one hand on the contribution the festival makes to the cohesion of the language regions in Switzerland and to the promotion of young singers, and on the other hand on the high international reputation that the festival enjoys in professional circles."
Additional support comes from numerous foundations and sponsors in kind. This time, the festival can count on a media partnership with SRG SSR and the Basellandschaftliche Zeitungthe Swiss Music Newspaper and numerous other specialist media.

Advance ticket sales start on Monday, March 19, 2018.

Photo: Guido Schärli

EJCF 2016: Female Academic Folk Choir, Bulgaria

The music begins without a conscious start. Delicate arpeggios on the harp, the cimbalom and the piano mingle with the lie notes in the wind instruments, humming chords and bells to create a stream of sound that is always in motion. Heinz Holliger's new opera Luneaconducted by himself at its world premiere at Zurich Opera House, never stands still. The music is a single fluid. Even the many points of calm are animated and are reminiscent of a dark lake whose surface is rippled by a breeze. Over forty different instruments are played by the four percussionists, from washboard to sandpaper. Holliger prefers to speak of "stroking instruments", that's how carefully the musicians have to act, that's how gentle the background noise is that Lunea enveloped. With his highly sensitive, richly colored music, Holliger wants the listener to discover the inner world of the poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850): his melancholy moods, his abysses, but also his bright and visionary thoughts.

Five years ago, the Swiss composer set 23 notes by the restless Austrian poet of world-weariness to music as a song cycle and later orchestrated them for a chamber orchestra. Together with librettist Händl Klaus, he has now developed an opera lasting around 100 minutes, which he subtitles "Lenau Scenes in 23 Leaves of Life". This musical theater is not based on a plot; a chronology was deliberately avoided. The open form of the texts is also reflected in the conception of the opera. The five vocal soloists take on several roles, whereby the boundaries are fluid. Lenau's platonic lover Sophie von Löwenthal is also his mother, and his friend Anton Schurz is also his alter ego. The stages of his life, which are more alluded to than precisely drawn, follow a dream logic. The stroke of September 29, 1844 - Nikolaus Lenau called it Riss - which paralyzed one side of his face and gradually drove him mad, is an axis from which the story is told in both directions. Memories and gloomy glimpses of isolation join hands. Another axis forms the exact center of the work: the twelfth page. From here onwards, some words and entire sentences are spoken backwards. Schuldig becomes gidlusch, Feuer becomes Reue, whereby the missing F is bracketed in the libretto. In Andreas Homoki's aesthetic production, the black wall between the scenes is moved at a snail's pace from left to right, i.e. in the opposite direction (set design: Frank Philipp Schlössmann). That's too much headiness and too little theatricality. There is no compelling, audible connection to the music. Just as there is no real tension between the poorly contoured figures on this dreamlike evening on the black stage. The characters, dressed by Klaus Bruns in elegant, shimmering blue Biedermeier dresses and frock coats, are carefully guided by Andreas Homoki. The scenes appear like paintings, the changing arrangements like family constellations. But the deliberately vague constellation of characters creates an arbitrariness that takes the sting out of the action.

With the baritone Christian Gerhaher, who has already performed the Lunea-song cycle, Holliger has chosen the most suitable interpreter for this elusive title character. Gerhaher animates even the smallest melodic phrase. One recognizes the great Lied interpreter in his sensitive interpretation of the text and the tonal shadings. Despite its avant-garde search for sound (without any electronics!), Holliger's music is highly romantic at its core, and the vocal lines radiate intensity and beauty. Juliane Banse (Sophie von Löwenthal), who already sang the title role in Heinz Holliger's first opera Snow White in the Zurich premiere in 1998, embodies a deeply emotional soulmate with a dark soprano coloration and great breath. With her agile, crystalline soprano, Sarah Maria Sun brings Lenau's past loves with an opera singer and a mayor's daughter to life. Ivan Ludlow with his not quite free-flowing baritone and Annette Schönmüller with her balanced mezzo are unable to give Lenau the necessary support as the married couple Anton and Therese Schurz. The outstanding Basel madrigalists are part of Biedermeier society or echo thoughts backstage. Holliger interweaves the stage action very closely with the excellent Philharmonia Zürich, when sibilant sounds are continued in the orchestra pit and the double bass clarinet's buzzing continues in the deep basses. Voice and instrument join hands. The precision with which the composer brings his own music to life delights the premiere audience. The balance is perfect, the overall sound always round and transparent. At the end, the poet becomes increasingly lonely and dark. The aphorism "Man is a sandpiper on the sea of eternity" is projected onto the empty stage. The strings of harmonics played in triple piano and the delicate glissandi of the winds stretch out time one last time and gradually dissolve into nothingness. An end without a conclusion.

Born in 1943, Max Haas studied musicology, medieval church and dogmatic history and Slavic philology in Basel and Heidelberg. He received his doctorate from the University of Basel in 1970 with a thesis on Byzantine and Slavic notation. Seven years later, he habilitated with studies on the relationship between medieval musicology and scholasticism. At the University of Basel, he was head of the microfilm archive of the musicology department and, from 1982, associate professor of musicology.

In the 1990s, he was a guest lecturer at Bar Ilan University in Israel and at the Graduate Department of the City University of New York in the USA. Until his retirement in 2005, he worked as a research assistant and lecturer at the Department of Musicology at the University of Basel. His most recent monographs deal with forms of perception and thought in music (2002) and musical thought in the Middle Ages (2005).

Thousands of artists have campaigned against the initiative, writes Suisseculture. Media are an important part of culture. Together with its affiliated associations and organizations, Suisseculture is committed to the preservation and development of the media as a public and cultural asset that guarantees cultural and media diversity. In addition to their entertaining function, radio and television are traditionally important cultural vehicles in cultural life.

Radio and television are not only responsible for the dissemination, but also for the reception and processing of artistic and cultural creation. Portraits, reviews and discussions ensure that artists' works are accessible to a wide audience and anchored in society through informed discourse.

According to Suisseculture, public broadcasting is an important forum for cultural creation and a vital source of income for cultural professionals and artists from all sectors and from all language regions of Switzerland. The umbrella organization is convinced that art and culture are dependent on independent, non-profit media with a broad range of offerings such as those provided by the SRG media.

Suisseculture wants to "continue to stand up together with all cultural professionals against the dismantling of the public service and culture in our media and is committed to a broad and diverse cultural offering in which lesser-known art forms should also be given their place".
 

In order to immerse themselves in Beethoven's music without any prior knowledge, pupils aged 13 to 17 at MKZ set out to develop their own visual interpretations of the iconic Fourth Symphony using special software. The project culminates in a live performance of the work with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich at the Tonhalle Maag.

Selected student visualizations will be projected onto a large screen behind the orchestra. The music students will use a car window crank to synchronize the visualizations live with the music and thus become part of the performance themselves.

The concert will take place twice - on Sunday, March 18 at 2:15 and 5 p.m. in the Tonhalle Maag concert hall, conducted by Yi-Chen Lin.

The No Billag initiative could have "devastating effects on the media and cultural landscape not only in Switzerland", write DOV and ver.di. At the moment, even experts can hardly predict the outcome. What is certain, however, is that the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG) would no longer exist in its current form if fee financing were to be abolished.

The Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft (ver.di) and the Deutsche Orchestervereinigung (DOV) consider such a step to be a serious risk. This is because the result in Switzerland would also have a signal effect on the debate in Germany.

According to DOV Managing Director Gerald Mertens, this would also jeopardize the provision of basic cultural services. The public orchestras, choirs and big bands in Germany make an irreplaceable contribution to society with their integrative work and commitment to music education. Without sufficient contributions, this unique cultural offering would be massively endangered.

Patrick Secchiari studied at the music academies in Fribourg and Bern and attended international master classes. He currently conducts two choirs as well as his self-founded vocal ensemble ardent.

The artistic director of the choir is Nicolas Fink, who was born in Bern and now lives in Leipzig. He works with leading professional choirs throughout Europe and is a sought-after partner for rehearsals. He has been the choir director of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Choir since 2014.

The other Board members are Maxime Thély (Administration), Ivana Aeschbacher (Logistics), Anna-Barbara Winzeler (Marketing and PR) and Doris Lüthi (Advisory Board and Consulting).

Jean-Pierre Salamin (former President), Hansrüedi Kämpfen (founder and initiator of the Swiss Youth Choir) - who was awarded honorary membership for his services to the Swiss Youth Choir -, Mirjam Schumacher (Public Relations) and Gian-Reto Trepp (joint project with the Central Switzerland Youth Symphony Orchestra ZJSO) were dismissed from the Board.

With the portal, the MIZ is responding "to the strong need for information of many providers in musical integration work". The experience of many volunteers and professionals has shown that there is a great need for this among those involved in integrative offers, explains Stephan Schulmeistrat, head of the MIZ. For two years, the MIZ has intensively supported the development of musical activities for refugees. The experience gained by the actors in their work became an important impetus for the development of the new platform.

In addition to practical information, the portal also provides suggestions for new offers and their implementation. As the portal has been developed and designed based on practical needs, interested parties can "understand how musical integration work currently functions in Germany from a supra-regional perspective: Who are the sponsors, who are the providers, where does funding come from, what are the goals of the projects and what problems can arise?"

In developing the portal, the MIZ was able to build on its experience with the platform "Musik macht Heimat - Engagement für Dialog", which was launched in October 2015. The impetus for this came from the members of the German Music Council, who passed the resolution "Welcome to Germany: Music makes you feel at home! From a culture of welcome to a culture of integration".

Website: integration.miz.org

After studying piano in Versailles, 37-year-old Tom Hellat studied philosophy, musicology and international law at the University of Zurich. He was responsible for classical music and regional cultural events at the Aargauer Kuratorium, the cultural promotion agency of the canton of Aargau. As a music journalist, he has written for various media and published a biography of the composer Peter Mieg.

As an expert in the field of music promotion, Tom Hellat has also been a member of the Cultural Promotion Commission of the Canton of Zurich since 2015. He founded the Strohhut label LeTom with his brother Rolf Hellat.

Heinrich Baumgartner will be leaving the Culture Department in late summer 2018 after seven years. During this time, he played a key role in shaping and developing the canton's cultural funding practices as head of the music funding department and, from 2013, as the person responsible for all application-based funding.

Born in Neuchâtel in 1976, Michel Vust currently lives in Zurich. He has been working for the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia since 2012 as the person responsible for promoting digital cultural creation. He has designed his own support systems for this. From 2005 to 2012, he was co-director of the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF). He was also responsible for various publications of the Locarno Film Festival. At the same time, he initiated the founding of an association that ensured the continued existence of the Neuchâtel concert hall "Case à Chocs".

Vust's new task is to "support and promote institutions and creative artists in their projects". The aim is to raise the profile of the Biel scene, which is characterized by bilingualism. It is responsible for promoting cultural activities in collaboration with the thirty or so institutions that have a performance contract.

In his new role, he also supports numerous cultural events on a selective basis. Together with the Cultural Commission, he monitors the allocation of funds for work grants and for studios abroad. He also manages several rooms that are made available to local artists. In collaboration with the Art Commission, he is responsible for the further development and preservation of the city's art collection.