The winners of the Swiss Music Prize 2017 are: Pascal Auberson (Lausanne), Andres Bosshard (Zurich), Albin Brun (Lucerne), Christophe Calpini (Longirod), Elina Duni (Zurich), Vera Kappeler (Haldenstein), Jürg Kienberger (Winterthur & St.Louis), Patricia Kopatchinskaja (Bern), Grégoire Maret (New York), Jojo Mayer (New York), Peter Scherer (Zurich), Endo Anaconda (Fankhaus-Trub), Töbi Tobler (Wittenbach), Helena Winkelman (Basel) and Jürg Wyttenbach (Basel).

The aim of the Swiss Music Prize is to "recognize outstanding and innovative Swiss music and bring it to the public's attention". From jazz, contemporary music, chanson and classical music to film, folk and improvisational music, the prize reflects "the outstanding and diverse spectrum of music creation in Switzerland", according to the BAK.

Denis Zhdanov began his musical studies in the Ukraine and has won prizes at the Polish Arthur Rubinstein Piano Festival and the Maria Canals Piano Competition in Barcelona, among others. The Bernese tenor Remy Burnens studies solo singing with Peter Brechbühler at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Among other things, he is the 2017 Migros Culture Percentage study prize winner.

The pianist Alexandra Sikorskaya and the violinist Sofiia Suldina will each receive an Edwin Fischer Recognition Award, endowed with 1000 francs each.

In memory of Edwin Fischer (1886-1960), the Lucerne School of Music and the Dreilinden Conservatory Association, in consultation with the Edwin Fischer Foundation, organize an annual competition for Master's students with a classical music profile. The aim of the foundation is to promote young musicians in the fields of jazz and classical music, to support musical life in Lucerne and to promote the Lucerne School of Music.
 

The ISCM World Music Days is the annual festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, founded in 1922, http://iscm.org) and will take place in 2017 from November 2 to 8 on Canada's west coast in Vancouver. The works to be selected are submitted by the 65 country sections and presented to the festival jury. The submissions from the Swiss Society for New Music SGNM/SSMC will be coordinated by its Vice President Nicolas Farine. The program of the ISCM WMD 2017 is available at http://iscm2017.ca/home/ online.

Dragos Tara was born in Bucharest in 1976 and grew up in Switzerland. The Lausanne-based double bassist and composer studied composition and electro-acoustic music with Michael Jarell, Eric Gaudibert, Emmanuel Nunes, Nicolas Bolens, Luis Naon and Rainer Boesch. He is a co-founder and member of the Association Rue du Nord, the Compagnie du Phonoscope and CH.AU. His works have been performed by Vortex, the NEC and Phoenix, and he was granted residencies at STEIM Amsterdam and CMMAS in Mexico in 2008, 2010 and 2013. In 2014 he was nominated for the Swiss Music Prize. His piece "Pixel" is a hybrid between installation and concert piece for solo double bass and live electronics and was premiered at the Festival Présences Electroniques in Geneva.

For 28 years, the Schaffhausen Jazz Festival has been documenting the Swiss jazz scene almost completely as a showcase of current Swiss jazz. The donation will "not only guarantee professional archiving, but also create public access", similar to what the HSLU Music is already doing with the archive of the Willisau Jazz Festival, write those responsible.

Together with the Swiss National Sound Archives, the university will process, catalog and store the material - over 3000 application documents, over 2500 hours of sound recordings by SRF 2 Kultur, media reports and festival photographs, concert videos, all advertising material (posters, program booklets, flyers and so on) - in order to make it accessible to the public as an online archive via the Schaffhausen Jazz Festival website in around two years' time.

Pryer has some musical experience: at the age of 18 he was already a member of the British boy band M.A.D. Live he will accompany his vocals with guitar and loop. His repertoire ranges from Elvis Presley to Ed Sheeran. But the Brit will also perform his own songs. He will be backed by two supporters from Germany, who also took part in the competition.

The competition was initiated and implemented by the newly founded Aargau association mission4music. The aim of the association is to realize and support projects in the field of music, especially in combination with new media.

More info: https://missionformusic.webling.ch/web.php/woq4BB/Konzert.html

From May 30, 2017, the entire estate will be available to the public on the digital platform www.volksmusik.ch be accessible. A launch project invites musicians from all genres to choose compositions and reinterpret them. There are no limits to the imagination. The aim is to demonstrate the relevance of Geisser's compositions for contemporary music.

A competition gives musicians the opportunity to submit a new arrangement or an innovative interpretation of the original. The ten most exciting interpretations will be selected by a jury of experts and performed in a concert in Altdorf on December 3, 2017.

The first prize is endowed with CHF 3000. "Quasi Geisser - the competition" is a project of "Intercantonal Cultural Competence Centers" supported by Pro Helvetia as part of the "Cultural Diversity in the Regions" initiative.

For Delokation, Strotter Inst. took three works from the festival program and remixed them: What remains of the identity of the original? And how much independence does a new work that has been generated entirely from existing material gain?

Delokation can be experienced in three "aggregate states" during the summer festival: At the Kunstmuseum, Strotter Inst. presents the remixes, supplemented by a film collage, via a screening and fragmentarily in several sound installations. At the Lucerne Festival, he will perform Delokation as a live remix in two performances with "artiste étoile" Patricia Kopatchinskaja and turntable artist Jorge Sánchez-Chiong.

The aim of the competition is to link the two cultural fields of music and visual arts: young, up-and-coming artists are invited to develop an ephemeral, performative, actionist project at the interface of these arts on the respective Lucerne Festival theme.

On May 2, 2017, the artists' unions Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnen-Angehöriger (GDBA) and Vereinigung deutscher Opernchöre und Bühnentänzer e. V. (VdO) reached an agreement with the German Stage Association as the employers' association in their collective bargaining negotiations on the regulations applicable to guest contracts, as they stated in a joint statement.

In detail, the agreed remuneration regulations include a minimum fee of 200 euros per performance - a deviation of up to 25 percent is possible for small roles or parts. In addition, a rehearsal fee of at least 90 euros has been agreed for full rehearsal days and 60 euros for half rehearsal days. The minimum fee for double performances is 150 percent of the minimum fee for a single performance.

In addition, the eligibility requirements for the payment of an allowance - i.e. vacation and Christmas bonuses - have been significantly improved. In contrast to the current regulations, months of employment from two seasons can now be added together in order to fulfill the necessary eligibility requirement of nine months of employment on the same stage. Previously, these nine months of employment had to be completed in one season in order to receive an allowance.

Finally, the parties to the collective agreement were able to agree on a regulation that will create legal certainty in future for fixed-term employment contracts concluded on the basis of the NV Bühne collective agreement. This relates in particular to sickness and parental leave replacements.

The agreement still has to be approved by the collective bargaining committees.
 

There are also beautiful places in the Ruhr region. Miners used to come to the Hammerteich in Witten when they made trips to the surrounding area on a budget. Now the sky is no longer as gray as it was 50 years ago, when the chimneys were still smoking in the industrial and coal-mining region. Now the sun is shining - and art is thriving: sound stations on the banks of the small Hammerteich pond invite you to listen. Gordon Kampe, a composer from nearby Essen, has a men's choir singing on the other bank. Small model ships also sail across the water. Kampe has equipped them with MP3 players that transport original sounds from nearby citizens. You learn something about the pond: what happened here, what is known about it.

Sounds - delayed

Oliver Weindling has been saying it again and again for years: one of his biggest goals as director of the Vortex jazz club is to see Irene Schweizer on stage. The pianist, now 75 years old, is considered one of the most influential figures in European free jazz. It is not least thanks to her pioneering work that the Swiss free jazz/improvisation scene enjoys an exceptionally strong reputation on an international level today. But traveling is no longer one of her favourite pastimes. Performances abroad have become rarer and rarer.

Now Weindling's dream has come true after all. As part of the 12-day Intakt Records Festival at the Vortex, she, whose career is so closely linked to the history of the label, performed several times. First alongside South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, with whom she has been friends since he landed in Zurich with the Blue Notes in 1964 while fleeing apartheid. During another set with Moholo-Moholo, she was joined by saxophonist Omri Ziegele. Schweizer performed a third time on stage with the English vocal artist Maggie Nicols. "It was an extraordinarily joyful experience," beams Weindling. "Irene was in a great mood for three days when she was here, and of course that made us very happy too, because I hear she wasn't always comfortable in England on previous occasions."

Resourceful concept

The 2003 agreement on intercantonal cooperation in the area of supra-regional cultural institutions regulates the equalization of cultural burdens between the cantons of Zurich, Lucerne, Aargau, Zug, Uri and Schwyz. The Cantonal Council of the Canton of Schwyz decided to join this agreement in 2005. In Zurich, the opera house, the Tonhalle and the Schauspielhaus are considered supra-regional cultural institutions, while in Lucerne they are the Kunst- und Kongresshaus (KKL), the Lucerne Theater and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra.

In the course of the first settlement period (2010-2012), the Schwyz Cantonal Council declared a motion in September 2011 that called for the agreement to be terminated. However, the government and cantonal council ultimately decided against withdrawing from the agreement in 2013. The cantonal government now plans to finance the cultural burden equalization in the previous amount of two million francs with voluntary funds from the lottery fund.

In response to an interpellation, the cantonal government has now stated that the "possible additional expenditure for the equalization of cultural burdens, currently amounting to around CHF 1.8 million, would not affect the canton's own cultural projects". According to the current state of knowledge, the payments for cultural promotion are not at risk over a time horizon of ten years. The cantonal government also reiterates that it does not promote cultural projects, but only projects, and intends to continue to do so in the future.

The entire answer to the interpellation:
https://www.sz.ch/public/upload/assets/28444/I_Kultureinrichtungen.pdf

Hosts are being sought for the period from August 12 to September 2, 2017, who will provide the academy students aged 18 to 32 with a place to sleep, including breakfast.

Interested parties can choose between two models, the "sponsorship" and the "host family". The "sponsorship" model offers free participation in events during the festival, where the hosts can experience their guests "in action": You receive two tickets each for the Academy's opening and closing concerts, followed by an aperitif, and you can attend selected Academy rehearsals, artist talks and the dress rehearsal of a symphony concert.

In addition, sponsoring families are automatically accepted into the circle of Friends of the Lucerne Festival for one year and benefit from exclusive offers such as participation in the event before the patron concert and an invitation to the information event on the program of the upcoming festival year. They also receive access to the Friends of Lucerne Festival Foyer Lounge and the right to purchase a maximum of 14 tickets in advance.

The "host families" will be paid 30 francs per night and person. They also receive two tickets for the Academy opening concert, a 50 percent discount on the purchase of two tickets for the Academy closing concert and the opportunity to attend selected Academy rehearsals.

More info: www.academy.lucernefestival.ch/service/gastfamilien/

Time to ponder: This opera, which indulges in softness, lasts just under three hours. The minimalist circling of the music lulls the listener to sleep. No dissonances disturb, no breaks, certainly no abysses. Dancers move on the fluffy carpet of the American composer Philip Glass. They take up the circling gesture: Arms embody waves, feet dart sometimes lithely, sometimes acrobatically across the empty, tilt-forward stage of Theater Basel.

There is no plot in the strict sense. Glass compared his opera, composed in 1980 Satyagraha with a photo album. It could also be called a "life in three pictures". It provides insights into decisive, early biographical stages of the Indian resistance fighter Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, later known as Mahatma Gandhi: his life in South Africa is shown on stage, the Newcastle protest march in 1913 and his life on the cooperatively organized Tolstoy farm.

Immerse or resist

Alexander Sitkovetsky studied at the Menuhin School and with Maxim Vengerov, among others; he currently teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He will move to Zurich with his family and continue his worldwide concert activities as a soloist and chamber musician from there.

Sergey Malov - like Sitkovetsky, born in 1983 - studied violin and viola at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin with Thomas Riebl and Antje Weithaas respectively, in whose classes he also worked as an assistant. In 2014, Malov was a substitute professor at the Stuttgart University of Music and Performing Arts.

Compositions for clarinet by Cristóbal Halffter, Krzysztof Meyer, Edisson Denissow, Augustyn Bloch and Toshio Hosokawa, among others, are due to his initiative. Together with Helmut Lachenmann, he also developed new playing techniques for his instrument.

Born in Basel, Eduard Brunner studied at the Basel Music Academy. In 1962, he became principal clarinettist in the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Rafael Kubelik. From 1992, he taught clarinet and chamber music at the Saarbrücken Academy of Music. According to the Musiques Suisses label, Brunner has recorded over 250 works for clarinet on CD, including with Alfred Brendel, Andràs Schiff, Oleg Kagan, Gidon Kremer, Jurij Bashmet, Kim Kashkashian, Natalia Gutman, the Borodin Quartet and the Hagen Quartet.