In the end, the performance of the young MKZ band from Zurich's Seefeld district stood out from many very good performances, writes the city of Zurich in a press release. With their slightly melancholy original compositions and their extremely compact playing style, the four teenagers won over both the audience and the jury.

The prize money is provided by the MKZ Foundation and is tied to a musical use, be it for training or to finance recording sessions. Although no sponsorship prize was awarded in the solo category, foundation and jury president Andrea F.G. Raschèr saw only winners on the stage of the Kanzlei-Club: "It is fascinating to see how high the standard is in the various categories of popular music at MKZ."
 

Arthur Lourié (1892-1966) is one of the great unknown composers of the 20th century. He belonged to the Russian avant-garde, later worked for Igor Stravinsky and was enthusiastic about Debussy and Busoni. His music combines the traditional (and archaic) with experimental, sometimes even post-modern concepts in an original and personal way. Many of his vocal works, most of which are still unknown, breathe the rich spirit of the "Silver Age", the artistic epoch in the early 20th century when Russia entered the threshold of modernity.

The highlight of this year's Lourié Music Days in Basel is the concert on November 6 at the Gare du Nord. Sasha Boldachev will be playing the Cinq préludes fragileswhich he arranged for harp. The Asasello Quartet then performs the 1st String Quartet, composed in 1915.

Robert Koller, bass-baritone, and Saori Tomidokoro, piano, perform six late songs for the first time worldwide. These are the following works for baritone and piano: Two Poems (1941/after James Joyce), Ave Atque Vale: Three Dionysus dithyrambs after Fr. Nietzsche (1948) and Serious hour (1959/after Rilke). The concert is rounded off with a suite based on the ballet music from The Moor of Peter the Great (1949-61) arranged for harp by A. Boldachev, also a world premiere.

The Arthur Lourié Society Basel has been committed to the dissemination and understanding of the works of the composer Arthur Lourié since 2005. The artistic director of the 9th Music Days, which will take place from November 2 to 6, is Stefan Hulliger.

www.lourie.ch
 

The final of the competition organized by HypoVereinsbank took place on November 2 on the big stage of Hamburg's Mehr! in front of 1500 spectators. The jury awarded two first prizes: one to the vocal quartet Dezibelles and the other to the six singers of the Leipzig ensemble Sjaella. While Sjaella represented the classical genre, Dezibelles impressed, according to the jury, "with folkloristic sounds, classical singing and pop elements as well as their refreshing choreography". Other finalists were the vocal ensembles HörBänd from Hanover, [SYʼZAN] from Mannheim and Blended from Berlin/Dresden/Stuttgart/Hamburg.

At the preliminary round in Berlin on September 29, Dezibelles won both the jury and the audience award. The four singers Andrea Fischer, Rebekka Bräm, Mélanie Lacroix and Anna Liechti met in the Zurich Youth Choir and have been pursuing a solo career since 2009.

HypoVereinsbank's Jugend kulturell program has been in existence since 1981, and the Jugend kulturell sponsorship award, which is endowed with 20,000 euros, has been awarded annually in the categories "Musical", "A Cappella", "Cabaret & Co." or "Pop Music" since 1994.
 

The bow is said to have once belonged to the violinist Bronislaw Huberman, the founder of the Israel Philharmonic. It is marked with his initials. It was sold by an unnamed violinist.

The Frenchman Tourte, who died in Pars in 1835, is regarded as the "Stradivarius of the bow". He holds a similarly prominent position for the bow as the legendary violin maker does for the violins themselves. He shaped the nature of the violin bow with technical innovations that still puzzle historians today. Tourte must have had very unusual mathematical knowledge and measuring skills for his time.
 

The organizers are looking for new ideas for church services and churches. The competition tasks also require two presentations, which will be uploaded to the website as a video. www.klangundgloria.ch The following are to be uploaded: the arrangement of a hymn and the creation of a text. The style can be freely chosen. The competition is aimed at committed amateurs and aspiring professional musicians as well as performers of other arts aged 18 and over.

With the competition, the organizers want to "draw attention to the diverse artistic and professional opportunities in church music. The ZHdK and other Swiss universities offer various attractive study programs in the field of church music. The parishes and parishes of the two regional churches offer interesting career prospects in the field of choir conducting and organ, as many positions are being filled due to retirements."

Beat Schäfer presides over the jury, which includes Burkhard Kinzler, Eugenio Giovine, Lislot Frei, Meinrad Furrer and Fabian Müller.

The website www.klangundgloria.ch provides information about the competition tasks and conditions of participation. Participants should upload their competition entries there by March 31, 2016 at the latest. The winners' concert will take place on May 28, 2016 in the lecture hall of the ZHdK.

www.klangundgloria.ch
 

The Grand Council Committee for Education, Culture and Sport (BKS) discussed the 2016-2019 task and finance plan and the relief measures in the BKS area in detail. In addition to the funding cuts for the board of trustees, the committee rejected the reduction in the number of independent lessons at elementary school and instead wants to cut the three lessons of early English in Year 3 at elementary school.

The Aargau Board of Trustees is the specialist body appointed by parliament and the cantonal government to decide on funding measures and awards in the field of current artistic creation in the canton of Aargau. It "promotes the diversity, quality and vitality of artistic creation, supports the creation of outstanding works and the examination of them, creates space for creative processes and the exchange between artists and the public as well as between artists".

The results of the Commission's deliberations and the proposals will now be forwarded to the Commission for Task Planning and Finance (KAPF). As the lead committee, the KAPF will examine the task and finance plan, including all relief measures, from a financial policy perspective. The KAPF is authorized to adopt amendments to the commission's proposals or further proposals for the attention of the Grand Council.

The Grand Municipal Council of the City of Winterthur has reduced the 2015 global credit of the Neighborhood Development Office by twenty percent or around CHF 408,000. To help implement this decision, the Neighborhood Development Office has decided to increase the rents for the 41 music practice rooms it manages as of mid-2015. The announcement of this increase has sparked protests from musicians, according to a press release from the city.

In April 2015, the mayor met with the musicians concerned for a discussion. Following a review of the situation, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Services has now decided to waive the planned rent increase. The city thus acknowledges that it has acted incorrectly in some cases.

Despite the waiver of the announced rent increase, the Department of Culture and Services sees a need for action with regard to the music practice rooms, the press release continues. On the one hand, there are differently structured rental contracts. The aim here is to standardize them. Secondly, the rental prices are currently different.

The latter is to be adjusted - with the aim of "adapting the prices to the quality of the premises". The associated adjustments to the rental prices should be moderate, and the bottom line is that there should be no significant additional burden for the musicians. The Department of Culture and Services intends to tackle the adjustment next spring together with the tenants of the music practice rooms.

The Neighborhood Development Office is implementing the savings mandate of the Grand Municipal Council in the current year with numerous large and small measures. For example, one employee had to be made redundant and various support services for neighborhood activities were reduced or cancelled. The measure now being discontinued for the music practice rooms is to be compensated for with various savings in day-to-day operations.

Michel Roth was born in 1976 and grew up in Lucerne. He studied composition in Basel with Roland Moser and Detlev Müller-Siemens and completed his studies in composition and music theory with honors. In 2002 he was appointed Professor of Music Theory and Composition in Lucerne. In collaboration with the Lucerne Festival Academy, he set up a Contemporary Art Performance course.

In 2011, he was appointed Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the Basel University of Music. He teaches composition and music theory at the Hochschule für Musik and is a research assistant in the Research and Development department.

Every year, the municipality of Kriens awards a cultural prize worth at least CHF 5,000 or a sponsorship prize. The prize is awarded to individuals who have "rendered outstanding services to art and culture in Kriens".

The Afro-Pfingsten association is over-indebted. According to a press release from the city of Winterthur, the company Fairmeetings AG, which organized the festival on behalf of the Afro-Pfingsten association, is no longer in a position to carry forward the event's losses and must also make a debt reduction. The city of Winterthur does not want to make a restructuring contribution for the accumulated debts of around 700,000 Swiss francs.

In a meeting between the mayor, the head of the City of Winterthur's culture department and the Afro-Pfingsten association's restructuring officer, it was determined that the Afro-Pfingsten association will not be restructured. It will probably have to file for insolvency as creditors have already taken legal action. The current financial, structural and legal situation should first be resolved before the future of the Afro-Pfingsten festival is considered.

The festival will not be held in 2016. Under the current circumstances, it is not possible to establish a viable and sustainable organizational structure in the remaining six months that can guarantee solid financing, the city writes further. However, both sides have signaled their interest in continuing the festival.

Where Zurich is concerned with non-operatic, non-narrative musical theater, Daniel Mouthon has attracted attention in recent decades with his continuous and innovative theater work. The singer, who was born in 1952 and became known for his acrobatic vocal skills in the 1980s, has regularly presented extraordinary projects that deal with socially critical and political approaches: plays based on James Joyce or Marcel Duchamp (or next year, for the anniversary, Dada). They are characterized by a discursive examination of texts and theories, of art in general - making him a forerunner of the discourse compositions that Patrick Frank presents today. Such compositions are no longer content with writing sounds, but aim to trigger a discussion about art and its role in the world.

The utopian in music theater is therefore of central importance to Daniel Mouthon: not as something aloof, but as something accessible. Mouthon's most recent work in this field seems unusual, because Liquid Crystal Display is a genuine, almost traditional opera, narrative, with singers and chamber orchestra, almost entirely sung and through-composed - and without breaks. There are no theoretical interpolations, no reflective meta-levels, no intermezzi. Everything is integrated into the libretto, which was written by Zurich writer and journalist Daniel Suter. And Mouthon, who otherwise often sings along and is at least involved in the direction, has withdrawn completely into the role of composer and producer.

Opera emotions drive

The opera is about a state president and a sect-like popular movement with a charismatic leader, about institutionalized media and open social media, about intrigues and falsified media images. Whoever has power over the images decides. Personalities, as we know them from the news, are reflected in the characters. In fact, it is a plot that suits the opera well - and yet speaks to our times, because Mouthon brings together musical theater and the modern world and poses the questions of our time in the opera, discursively, but also in a sensual way. Liquid Crystal Display is a parable of a democracy that is changing in the age of total medialization.

The paradox of the play is that, although it tells of the omnipotence of the media, the meaningfulness of the work lives far more from the good old operatic qualities of love, emotion, jealousy, power and intrigue than from the all-dominant media technology. It may be that the venue, a parish hall, is too sober after all and that the technical and financial possibilities were too limited to portray the overwhelming technology in its survival size. The strength of the work lies in its emotional depth, both musically and in Stefan Nolte's staging, which manages almost entirely without a stage set. Mouthon draws on the "powerhouse of passions", as Alexander Kluge once called opera: Artistic singing is able to heighten emotions; it expresses what is deep inside people and might remain hidden there. Music is a trigger, and Mouthon wants to bring this elite art form closer to the reality of our lives.

Feelings make you stumble

This power or driving force can be felt everywhere in the music. The mini-orchestra - the Ensemble für neue Musik Zürich under the direction of Sebastian Gottschick - does not so much carry the singing as drive it. In the first two acts in particular, this music is restless, it repeatedly contains familiar elements, but they shoot past us so quickly that it is almost impossible to hold on to them, nervous, obsessive even. This also makes the introduction somewhat difficult, because in the over-acoustic hall, the music and the vocals penetrate the listener very directly. The comprehensibility of the lyrics dwindles, there are too many impressions - probably deliberately so.

A committed vocal ensemble is on the move with Robert Koller as President P, Catriona Bühler as cult leader M, Daniel Bentz as their chief ideologue A, Chasper-Curò Mani as media boss B and Franziska Andrea Heinzen as creative designer C. And it is this last character who really makes the play unfold. Initially, we see her in a subordinate administrative role at the media group. However, her former love for A brings feelings into play that thwart B's game of intrigue. Her confrontation with M in the fourth and final act is the climax of the almost two-hour work. When C harasses M there, her singing falters and then erupts all the more violently: the notes become killing arrows. That is magnificent. This shows how much Mouthon composes from the voice, from its physicality. Indeed: the "powerhouse of passions" is, unexpectedly in this particular place, of enormous effect.

Hedy Graber, Head of the Culture and Social Affairs Directorate at the Federation of Migros Cooperatives, was presented with the European Cultural Manager of the Year award in Berlin. Other nominees were Chris Dercon, Director of the Tate Gallery of Modern Art London, and Annemie Vanackere, Director of the Theater Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.

The Kulturmarken Award 2015 honors committed cultural mediators, creative forms of investment and successful cultural providers. A jury of experts from the worlds of business, culture, science and the media selects the winners in seven categories. One of the reasons given by the jury for its choice was the great significance for the national activities of Migros Culture Percentage, which Graber has developed over a long period of time in her field of activity.

Born in Hergiswil in 1945, Josef Gnos completed an apprenticeship as a civil engineering draughtsman and then obtained a diploma in clarinet and wind music direction. He received his training in clarinet from Giuseppe Mercenati and in wind music direction from Albert Benz at the Lucerne Conservatory. From 1973 to 2010 he was head of the Sarnen Music School. He was also head of wind music studies at the Lucerne School of Music for many years. He is still active today as a guest conductor, expert, juror, author and speaker.

Josef Gnos conducted many important orchestras, including the Symphonic Wind Orchestra of the Swiss Army, the National Youth Wind Orchestra and the Lucerne Orchestra Society. However, he also cultivated many other musical genres such as folk music, classical music - for example as a board member and artistic advisor to the Chamber Music Festival erstKlassik on Lake Sarnen - or jazz.

Since 2008, Josef Gnos has conducted the Lucerne Seniors' Orchestra (a romantic ensemble of around 65 musicians), with which he gives around ten concerts a year, accompanies young soloists and which enjoys great popularity.

The Obwalden Culture Prize is not awarded at regular intervals. As a rule, it is awarded approximately every three years. To date, it has been awarded to Caspar Diethelm (1969), Brother Xaver Ruckstuhl (1971), Dr. August Wirz (1973), Meinrad Burch-Korrodi (1977), Zita Wirz (1983), Julian Dillier (1990), Bepp Haas (1990), Franz Bucher (1996), Eugen Bollin (1999), Adrian Hossli (2003), Karl Imfeld (2006), Ruedi Rymann (2007), Alois Spichtig (2010) and Romano Cuonz (2013).

Eight trombones in a church - that sounds good. Filling the space, supported by longer reverberation times, the sound of these Preamblewhich the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas wrote for the Trombone Unit Hannover. Haas is a fanatic for detail. He controls sophisticated microtonal soundscapes like hardly anyone else. What many regard as mere ornamentation becomes the main compositional focus in the sense of Haas' musique spectrale: the fine intermediate tones between semitones, those quarter, sixth and eighth tones for which a continuously intoning trombone is better suited than a church organ.

This opening concert symbolically anticipated the Donaueschingen Music Days. As a place of funerals and weddings, the church performance venue stands for farewells and new beginnings. Here, the sad farewell to the previous festival director Armin Köhler, who died in 2014. On the other, the hopeful beginning of Björn Gottstein's tenure as the new curator of the Donaueschingen Music Festival. Gottstein's signature is not yet apparent in musical terms. The programs are largely fixed until 2017 - also because large ensemble and orchestral scores take time. After that, Gottstein wants a more international focus for the Music Days, which have so far been too Central European in character. In addition, female composers are to be given more prominence - an understandable and commendable concern given that only Olga Neuwirth was represented this year.

Too little convincing

Olga Neuwirth's spatial composition Le Encantadas o le avventure nel mare delle meraviglie for six ensemble groups distributed around the room, samples and live electronics did not fulfill everything the composer had reported in the program book. The 70-minute work was supposed to be about electronic imitations of certain spatial effects, such as those of the Venetian church of San Lorenzo. Despite the enormous technological effort involved, this is hardly comprehensible. Especially not for anyone sitting directly next to one of the many loudspeakers and not in the middle of the hall. It is nothing new that an interesting concept is not realized in terms of sound. Neuwirth's composition was convincing in other respects: in the fine sound work, in the sense of development and also through sublime spatial effects, reminiscent of those mentioned by Neuwirth. Prometeo Luigi Nono.

High art was in short supply this year. If out of 18 world premieres only a maximum of three good works jump out - including Mark Barden's fantastic aMass for amplified ensemble, Mark André's clarinet concerto about and Neuwirth's composition - then that is not enough. The orchestral concerts were particularly disappointing. Why the Italian composer Francesco Filidei made such a childish reference to Johann Sebastian Bach remains his secret. Filidei writes that he wanted to take the most perfect thing he knew on earth by the horns and attack it. Killing Bach is the name of his curious orchestral work, which ended up somewhere in no man's land between collage, quotation composition and deconstruction - but ultimately remains in the memory of at least one person: the masochist.

Complex with unanswered questions

The Donaueschingen Music Days have a laboratory character. The failure of an experiment is possible here, not desired, but permitted. Bigger problems arise when the experimental set-up is vague, when composers get lost in the dubious, when they compensate for the lack of a good idea with an accumulation of mere ideas, which - see Neuwirth - often appear in the guise of the exuberantly theoretical. Patrick Frank's comprehensive work of art also has a sprawling character Freedom - the eutopian society. The composer, who was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1975 but has lived in Switzerland for a long time, integrates cultural theory readings, a wellness oasis with wellness offers in the form of massages and various screens showing quotes from important writers, as well as information about app-controlled audience reactions and toilet visits. Frank's opulent complex of works, with additions from other artists and composers, is partly funny, partly a little confused and scattered. Ultimately, however, it poses important questions. In times in which independent thinking is under threat, Frank provides many theses on the fact that freedom today appears highly ambivalent, that politics in the sense of left and right can no longer be grasped. There are no clear answers. But at least Frank, unlike many of his colleagues at Donaueschingen this year, has one important concern.

On July 9, 2016, 10,000 musicians from all over Germany will perform in the football stadium. The largest orchestra in the world is set to break the current world record for the Guinness Book of Records. The Neue Philharmonie Frankfurt and "well-known stars" will also be taking part. 

Wolf Kerschek will conduct the world's largest orchestra. The winner of the Echo Klassik and the Hamburg Jazz Prize will be the musical director of the rehearsals and the concert. He will also support the technical realization of the project. The initiator of the project is trumpeter Jens Illemann, a graduate of the Hamburg University of Music.

Four pieces are on the program for the record attempt: excerpts from Dvořák's 9th and Beethoven's 9th symphony, "Starlight Express" from the musical of the same name and "Music was my first love" by John Miles. You can register to take part on the project's website.

More info: www.wirfuellendasstadion.de
 

In its financial strategy of July 2015, the Basel-Landschaft cantonal government proposed annual cuts totaling CHF 30 million in the areas of universities and culture. Parliamentary motions are currently under discussion regarding the termination of the university contract and the cultural contract by the Canton of Basel-Landschaft.

The governments of Basel-Landschaft and Basel-Stadt are now committed to a joint partnership in the areas of university and culture. In the joint negotiations, the two governments have agreed that the Canton of Basel-Stadt will make an annual contribution of CHF 20 million to the Canton of Basel-Landschaft from 2016, limited to four years until 2019. The Canton of Basel-Landschaft will continue the university agreement, the University of Basel real estate agreement and the cultural agreement until 2019 without terminating them. 

The Government Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt has approved the corresponding proposal for the approval of expenditure for the attention of the Grand Council and is requesting that the matter be dealt with urgently at the Grand Council meeting on November 11, 2015. If the Grand Council does not approve this, the contracts could be terminated as of December 31, 2015.

Basel-Landschaft had previously threatened to halve the cultural contributions to the city (Musikzeitung reported).