The corpus of the prototype is made from a fiber mixture consisting exclusively of hemp fibers and water. Evaporation makes the material as strong as hardwood, but an extreme shrinkage process sets in during drying. This creates deformations that make it difficult to produce concave surfaces and bodies. Frank repeatedly adapted the silhouette of the guitar accordingly.

The instrument has a specific sound and, according to the Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences, is designed to compete with conventional guitars.

Frank wants to further perfect the prototype and produce a revised version of the guitar. Together with business experts, the industrial designer is also examining the commercial viability of the concept. Due to its novel and unconventional design, the "canna guitar" could be of particular interest to guitar lovers, collectors and experimental players.

For the Swiss singer, it is "a great honor and privilege to be invited by one of the most important orchestras in the world for this international tour," writes her secretariat. She will perform the arias and recitatives for alto in the Passion at the concerts. Following the tour, the work will then be performed on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday in St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, as is tradition.

Born in Fribourg, mezzo-soprano Marie-Claude Chappuis studied in her home town with Tiny Westendorp, at the Mozarteum Salzburg with Breda Zakotnik and with Margreet Honig. From 1999 to 2003, she was a member of the ensemble at the Landestheater in Innsbruck under the direction of Brigitte Fassbaender. In 2001, she founded the Festival du Lied in Fribourg, of which she is the artistic director.

According to the draft law, the transfer of performance rights from the publisher to the theater will no longer apply if, for example, the author of a play or the composer of an opera leaves the respective publisher because another publisher offers him better conditions.

In the repertoire of municipal theaters, however, works often remain on the repertoire for several seasons. Even after many years, a production may be revived. The performance contracts with the publishers usually provide for corresponding options for later seasons. If the publisher changes, this option can no longer be fulfilled.

A further offer of a production in the repertoire or a later revival would thus be deprived of its copyright basis, writes the Bühnenverein. This situation could even occur shortly before a premiere if an author withdraws the rights from the publisher at precisely this point in time due to the expiry of the 5-year period. The resulting economic risks for the theater are incalculable.

The Bühnenverein also considers regulations that grant rights holders extensive rights to information to be problematic. In the case of DVD productions, for example, a considerable administrative burden arises in daily practice, as each individual performing artist involved in the production - including the choir and orchestra - is entitled to information about sales figures and other data.

The allocation of remuneration claims to different uses of rights provided for in the law is equally complicated. This would make it more difficult to achieve the lump-sum compensation that is customary in the theater sector in the case of a recording, which would also be preferred by performing artists. The Bühnenverein is calling on the Federal Government to withdraw the draft law, which has also met with considerable criticism from authors and publishers in recent weeks.
 

According to the Swiss Association of Musicians, the 2016 auditions took place from February 8 to 12 at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB). 82 young instrumentalists and singers were invited to take part. A total of CHF 125,000 was awarded.

Five first prizes ex aequo (15,000 francs each) went to Arata Yumi, violin; Leonor Dill (Prix Collard), piano; Stefanie Mirwald, accordion; Alice Rossi, soprano and Lisa Wyss, saxophone.

Five second prizes ex aequo (CHF 10,000 each) went to Carlota Cáseres, percussion; Chiara Enderle, violoncello; Joachim Müller-Crepon, violoncello; Céline Pasche, recorder and Sara Zazo Romero, saxophone.

At the request of the STV, the "Composer" category was once again included in the annual Kiefer-Hablitzel interpretation competition. Works for solo piano without any electronics and without preparation were required. This year, however, only very few works were submitted. Three of them deserved a study prize, but were not quite enough for a composition prize, writes the STV.

The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts (MWK) is funding the joint application from the three Freiburg universities as part of a teacher training program in Baden-Württemberg. The cooperation takes place under the umbrella of the Freiburg Advanced Center of Education (FACE), which the university and the PH founded together last year.

According to the Freiburg University of Music, the aim of the cooperation is "a new, professionally-oriented profile for the training of future teachers in the subject of music". The structure and content of the Bachelor's and Master's degree courses are intended to combine subject knowledge, artistic subject, music didactics and educational science as closely as possible.

Key topics include inclusion, interculturality, popular music as well as making music, improvising and inventing music in the classroom. The Institute of Musicians' Medicine at the University Medical Center Freiburg is also involved in developing courses on how to deal with one's own voice.

The concerto "Tout un monde lointain" by Henri Dutilleux, composed between 1967 and 1970, has long since become a modern classic and is already available in several recordings, some of which feature a highly prominent cast, according to the explanatory statement written by Michael Stegemann for the jury. According to the statement, what makes the recording by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (LSO) with cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand stand out is its deeply poetic and, in the most beautiful sense of the word, "speaking" interpretation.

The references to the eponymous verses by Charles Baudelaire are the common thread here as a kind of "sound speech" that is interpreted, to which the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan contributes all the other colors that the work unfolds. The program selection also places Dutilleux in the context of Debussy.

The highlight of the Day of Music will be an open-air closing concert with Swiss music greats from various genres on the Bundeshausplatz in Bern.

To make music accessible to everyone, the Swiss Music Council is calling on everyone who is involved with music in any way to get active on June 21, 2016. Under the label "Day of Music", concerts on the village square, club parties for members and fans, an open day at a sheet music store, a spontaneous celebration for friends and acquaintances and much more can be organized.

The Day of Music - or the Fête de la musique, as it is known in French-speaking regions - was initiated by former French Minister of Culture Jack Lang and is celebrated every year on June 21. In France, Germany and other European countries, as well as in French-speaking Switzerland, the TdM/FdM has long been an integral part of the annual calendar.

More info: www.musikrat.ch/tag-der-musik

The musicians of the Orpheum Supporters Orchestra can work on masterpieces in a professional setting and perform with young soloists. This also provides opportunities to cultivate and expand their personal network. The project aims to raise awareness of the Orpheum Foundation among opinion leaders in society and build new relationships with sponsors and patrons.

The participants of the Orpheum Supporter Orchestra are invited to make a contribution to the project. This income is part of the project budget.

The Orpheum Supporter Orchestra will perform works by Mozart, Sarasate and Bizet at the Tonhalle Zurich on Wednesday, April 20, 2016. The soloists are former Orpheum soloist Claire Huangi, young Orpheum soloist Aurelia Shimkus and SRF Head of Culture Nathalie Wappler (pianos) and Elin Kolev (violin). Howard Griffiths conducts.
 

According to the "Journal de Genève", the OSR Foundation is keeping quiet about the reasons for Swinnen's departure. It is therefore also unclear whether Swinnen is leaving the orchestra voluntarily or involuntarily.

Moreover, the ensemble is currently without a chief conductor. The OSR will not have a new chief conductor for several months: The plan is for Jonathan Nott to officially succeed Neeme Järvi, who relinquished the post in 2015, in January 2017.

According to the OSR itself, the contract with Nott has not yet been signed. OSR Foundation President Florence Notter and Vice-President Sylvie Buhagiar will travel to London to "resolve the situation".

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) announces that Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla has been appointed as the orchestra's 12th Music Director from September 2016 for an initial period of three years. She succeeds Andris Nelsons, who led the orchestra from 2008 to 2015.

Born into a family of musicians in Vilnius, Lithuania, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla initially studied choral and orchestral conducting at the Graz University of Music and Performing Arts in Austria. She then furthered her studies at the conservatory in Bologna, at the Leipzig University of Music and at the Zurich University of the Arts.

In the 2011/12 season, she was appointed 2nd Kapellmeister at the Theater und Orchester Heidelberg for two seasons, before moving to the Konzert Theater Bern as 1st Kapellmeister in 2013/14. In spring 2014, she was appointed as the new music director of the Salzburg State Theater from 2015/16.

The five-year funding of 1.1 million euros will enable Langenbruch and her group to investigate how "the musical past is constructed in music theater - for example in operas, operettas and musicals".

Langenbruch explains that there are hundreds of plays that deal with historical musicians. They often appear as stage characters themselves. Music history itself thus becomes an aesthetic event. The researcher is interested in how this type of knowledge production works, i.e. how knowledge about music is created in the medium of music.

Photo: Scene from the opera "Palestrina" by Hans Pfitzner: Roberto Saccà as Palestrina, surrounded by the dead masters of the art of music in Act 1. Performance of the Hamburg State Opera 2011. photo: Jörg Landsberg, Bremen. Source: wikimedia commons
 

The works of Swiss-born Camille Graeser (1892-1980) sometimes appear strictly geometric, sometimes as a dancing structure of moving pictorial elements. With the exhibition Camille Graeser and the music focuses on an important aspect of the artist's work that has been little researched to date: Camille Graeser's relationship to music. The exhibition focuses on the 'Loxodromic Compositions'1 created between 1946 and 1955. The approximately 70-part group of works shows the influence that musical rhythms and sound patterns had on Camille Graeser's artistic work.

Born in Carouge near Geneva, Camille Graeser (1892-1980) is considered an important pioneer of constructivist-concrete art in the post-war period. In 1933, he emigrated from Stuttgart to Zurich, where, as a former furniture designer, graphic artist and interior designer, he devoted himself entirely to the visual arts. As a concrete artist, Camille Graeser cultivated a sober formal language that dispensed with narrative content. In contrast to his companions Max Bill and Richard Paul Lohse, who pursued a strictly theoretical approach, Graeser chose a freer and more poetic approach, comparing the creation of images to the virtuoso composition of music. He made his first reflections on the analogy between art and music in Adolf Hölzel's lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. Furthermore, Johann Sebastian Bach's Art of the fugueThe free tonality of Paul Hindemith, as well as Arnold Schönberg's twelve-tone technique, inspired him to rethink concrete art compositionally.

Between 1946 and 1955, the group of works of the Loxodromic compositions. In them, geometric shapes, rhythmic angular and bar constructions combine to form dynamic compositions. Titles like Symphony of color or Delicate joint in red-green-black illustrate the reference to music. For his virtuoso handling of color, form and material, Graeser draws not least on his media-rich experience as an interior designer, furniture designer and commercial artist.

Camille Graeser, Symphony of Color, 1946/50

Camille Graeser Foundation, Zurich. Photo: © Camille Graeser Foundation, Zurich / ProLitteris, Zurich

The exhibition Camille Graeser and the music, January 30 to April 10, 2016, is a collaboration between the Camille Graeser Foundation, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the Aargauer Kunsthaus. Around 70 paintings, drawings and conceptual sketches are on display.

As part of the "Cultural diversity in the regions" initiative of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, a joint project entitled "Art en partage - cultural participation" is being launched. This will promote artistic productions that are created between an existing or specially formed group of people and professional cultural practitioners. A cultural mediator can assist in the development of the project.

One of the aims of the initiative is to facilitate access to contemporary creation through personal contact with creative artists and to use "the potential of joint creative processes to explore social issues".

An invitation to submit projects is open until 15 April 2016. The supported projects should be realized by 31 October 2017. The conditions of participation can be found on the website of the Department of Culture: www.vs.ch/kultur > Subsidy opportunities > Art en partage - cultural participation

You've probably already experienced this: you hear a piece of music, a melody, and suddenly your heart soars - you could whoop with happiness. Or you come home angry because something has gone completely wrong and instinctively reach for the CD that will give you some breathing space.

Music goes straight to the heart, without detours via the intellect. The sense of hearing is the only one of our senses that is directly connected to the limbic system, the emotional center of the brain. And so music resonates directly with our moods, can deepen or change them. Above all, however, music is one of the surest door openers to the realms of the unconscious; it releases blockages or resistance and gives us access to hidden resources.

Music as a guide
Try it out for yourself! If you are about to make a decision that you are struggling with, you could try the following: First, visualize the situation at hand. What is at stake? What alternatives are available? Then A hero's life, the hero's escape from the world and completion by Richard Strauss so that all you have to do is press the button to play the music. Lie down, relax and visualize the question you are looking for an answer to. Then search for a path in your mind, go to a fork in the road, let the music take effect on you - what images, symbols, feelings emerge? Where does the path take you? What changes? After the last bar of the piece, give yourself some time to process the impressions.

Photo: zVg/Lassalle-Haus

Anna Röcker

When I listened to this very piece during my first course with music therapist Anna Röcker at Lassalle-Haus and went "on a journey" with it, I didn't know immediately after the music faded out which would be the right decision. But based on the images and moods that emerged during my musical journey, I sensed which path was more suitable and also recognized which resistances were there that made my choice more difficult. I can only say: it turned out well, I was able to let go of something, give up an activity that took up a lot of time and energy and with which I was never completely satisfied.  

Born in Neuchâtel in 1926, Nicolet studied the flute with André Jaunet and theory and composition with Willy Burkhard at the Zurich Conservatory and continued his studies with Marcel Moyse and Yvonne Drappier at the Paris Conservatory. Wilhelm Furtwängler recruited him as principal flute with the Berlin Philharmonic, where he was active from 1950 to 1959. Renowned composers, including Toru Takemitsu, Rudolf Kelterborn and György Ligeti, wrote works for him.

From 1952 to 1965, Nicolet was a professor at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and from 1965 to 1981 he was head of the master class in Freiburg. With his own school for flautists, he influenced generations as an outstanding teacher and performer for his instrument.