How the austrian music information center mica - music austria today announced that "Voices for Refugees", a solidarity concert for a humane Europe, will take place in Vienna on October 3. It is being organized by the Volkshilfe Austria together with Nova Music and other organizations. There will be 15 bands to listen to, from Bilderbuch to Zucchero.

mica - music austria and Volkshilfe Österreich are now offering musicians who are not taking part in the concert the opportunity to make their voices heard. Until September 29, solo artists, ensembles and bands can send their "thoughts on those people who have had to leave their homeland, on European history and the future, on the self-image of a democratic republic" or on the events of the last few weeks in the form of a statement together with a photo or as a video message (download link) to:

steiner@musicaustria.at
Subject: Voices for Refugees

Statements from Switzerland are also welcome. This appeal by mica - music austria is also addressed to labels, publishers, managers, organizers, etc. with the request that they forward this appeal to their musicians.
 

Further information: http://voicesforrefugees.com

Marco Beltrani and Nadja Räss are rehearsing an exciting program with jutz.ch for the 10th European Youth Choir Festival Basel (EJCF) between 4 and 8 May, with a special focus on performance. Young singers or yodelers who are used to performing as soloists or in ambitious choirs are cordially invited to immerse themselves in the Swiss yodelling tradition as part of this project. Anyone between the ages of 16 and 24 who is interested is invited to audition in December. The program, which lasts around 40 minutes, will be rehearsed from January to April 2016.
The jutz.ch project choir will sing the entire program by heart. Small choreographies will be rehearsed during the rehearsals.
The costs for accommodation and meals during the rehearsal weekends and the festival in Basel are covered. Travel expenses are borne by the singers.

Participation in the EJCF, the renowned meeting of the best European youth choirs, is a unique opportunity for ambitious singers from the classical choir scene and the folk music scene.
Singing teachers are therefore asked to make their students aware of this offer. The deadline for registration is October 31, registration is handled online: www.ejcf.ch/projekt-jodelchor

Information about the project choir can be obtained by calling Marco Beltrani on 079 543 81 60 or the festival office on 061 401 21 00. Further information about the festival can be found here www.ejcf.ch
 

The Haberhaus Kulturclub in the old town of Schaffhausen is indispensable for cultural life in the Schaffhausen region, writes the canton in a press release. It provides various regional event organizers with a performance venue that meets their needs for a small stage.

The Haberhaus Stage Association is separate from the operation of the associated restaurant. The association makes the space available for broad and varied cultural use. The financial contribution from the canton amounts to CHF 25,000 per year. The annual contribution from the city of Schaffhausen is CHF 20,000. The service agreement with the Haberhaus Bühne association is valid from mid-2015 until the end of 2018.

50 cellists competed in the violoncello category at the 22nd International Johannes Brahms Competition in Pörtschach am Wörthersee, Austria. Christoph Croisé won first prize in the 3rd round. Second prize went to Yoosin Park (born 1990, South Korea) and third prize to Kacper Nowak (born 1987, Poland). The jury consisted of Alexandre Bouzlov, Catalin Ilea, Matthieu Lejeune, Kyung-Ok Park and Éva Simić-Németh.
Around 200 soloists and over 30 ensembles performed in the piano, chamber music, violin, viola and cello categories at the Brahms Competition from September 5 to 13. The competition is organized by the Johannes Brahms Society Pörtschach.

Born in 1993, Christoph Croisé has been performing internationally as a solo cellist since the age of 17. On November 7, he will be performing together with pianist Oxana Shevchenko at the Tonhalle Zurich to hear.
 

www.christophcroise.ch
www.brahmscompetition.org
 

In view of the fact that the USA has not acceded to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Cultural Diversity, the resolution calls for "normatively effective approaches to cultural, media and educational policy protection to be enshrined in all relevant chapters of the TTIP agreement".

It also points out that "the far-reaching effects that such an agreement could have on the cultural infrastructure and on the media, culture, science and education on offer in Germany" continue to require an informed and broad social and political debate and should not be subject exclusively to economic policy considerations.

Finally, it calls on German politicians to unequivocally "advocate legally effective protection mechanisms in the sense of a technology-neutral further development of regulation to safeguard diversity of information and opinion, media pluralism and linguistic and cultural diversity, and to advocate this in the coming rounds of negotiations".

The whole resolution: www.unesco.de/index.php?id=reshv75_ttip
 

Every two years it takes over the Bern Music Festivalto bring together the wealth of local musical life - until now alternating with the interdisciplinary Biennale Bern. This year's fifth edition, entitled Big Bang From September 3 to 13, the festival offered an almost unbelievable series of events for all ages. It opened in the cathedral with the Genesis Suitea setting of texts from the First Book of Moses, premiered in 1945, in which prominent composers including Arnold Schönberg and Igor Stravinsky participated.

Alongside such traditional concerts were (dance) performances and sound installations; in Club Bonsoir, musicians from the computer and turntable scene presented their own remix of the festival's sound material; in the city, Zoro Babel and Andrea Lesjak let passers-by make music on their giant stone slab xylophone; and percussionist Fritz Hauser transformed Münsterplatz into a fascinating soundscape in his own choreography with around 120 small and large percussionists, string players and bell ringers. A series of scientific talks also explored topics relating to the "Big Bang".

The festival tradition began in 2007 with a major music festival to celebrate the 100th birthday of the composer and teacher Sándor Veress. Even then, the plan was to continue the format, says musicologist Hanspeter Renggli, but no longer to focus on a single personality. Renggli is head of the festival's program group and will remain president of the supporting association until the autumn. The program group, he explains, determines the festival motto. This is intended as a guard rail to prevent arbitrariness, but also to encourage the artists to make their own associations. For example, the term "Big Bang" can be associated with the findings of space physics as well as the biblical story of creation, the beginning of contemporary music in the work of Arnold Schönberg or the beginning of a love affair when you "fall in love". The program group examines all projects that are proposed for the festival. Cooperation between different institutions is particularly welcome. This is what makes the festival so special.

One such co-production of five (!) very different formations was the concert Planck at the Dampfzentrale. Two baroque orchestras, Die Freitagsakademie and Les Passions de l'Amethat ensemble protonthat Piano duo huber/thomet (Susanne Huber and André Thomet) and the percussion quartet Ensemble This/Ensemble That (the festival's ensemble-in-residence) played a clever program in which baroque music alternated with new pieces by younger composers who were inspired in different ways by the festival motto. Proton had been working with Leonardo Idrobo Adrift which creates elements from a mass of sound and light that expand and contract. The sounds of the ensemble are complemented by electronic feeds, spoken texts and the projection of colorful images. On this evening, however, only an excerpt without electronics and projection could be heard, a transparent network of colorful sound lines; the actual premiere took place a few days later.

Huber/thomet and the four percussionists interpreted Cosmic Swoosh by Michael Pelzl. With two prepared concert grand pianos, celesta and gongs, the composer contrasts a dark and a light sphere - with tonal imagination, but somewhat schematically. At the beginning and end of the evening, the five groupings merged in Planck of the Basler Martin Jaggi to the ensemble collective. Jaggi refers to the Planck space probe, which was able to capture the cosmic background radiation, the "footprint" of the Big Bang, for the first time.

The American physicist John G. Cramer's attempt to convert Planck's data into sounds forms the background of the piece at times in the form of a tape recording. Jaggi integrates the different instruments, which are also tuned differently, into a differentiated whole and finds distinctive sound combinations, for example in the dialog between the (amplified) theorbo and the softly struck gongs. The music-making was excellent throughout. The phenomenal violinist Meret Lüthi from Les Passions de l'Ame in one of the most memorable performances. Rosary-sonatas by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber.

The festival is currently facing important changes. In 2014, the city government decided to fund either the Biennale or the music festival in future and ultimately opted for the music festival. Since then, internal discussions about the future shape of the festival have been ongoing. It is clear that the city expects an opening to the outside world and more international appeal. However, it is equally clear that the event must not degenerate into a transit station for traveling stars. To this end, the artist-in-residence model is to be expanded, with more foreign artists - such as this year's percussion quartet - taking part in various events and thus helping to shape the program.

musicfestivalbern.ch

An ENT doctor or a hearing aid acoustician appointed by him determines the individual tinnitus frequency of a patient. This indicates which areas of the auditory center of the brain are affected by the tinnitus. With the Tinnitracks app, the frequency can be filtered out of the patient's favorite music. According to the health insurance company, regular listening to the filtered music calms the overactive tinnitus nerve cells. This can reduce the intensity of the tinnitus.

The treatment method is useful if there is subjective, chronic stable-tonal tinnitus without fluctuation in pitch that lasts longer than three months in total. The phantom sound must be narrow-band enough so that a tinnitus frequency can be determined. The frequency must be below 8500 Hz.

Founded in 2012, Sonormed GmbH has developed Tinnitracks, an award-winning medical product for tinnitus treatment that, according to its own advertising, gives over three million tinnitus sufferers in Germany access to a new form of therapy. In June 2014, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology named Sonormed the most innovative company in the healthcare sector in the EU.

Musicologists led by Rainer Kleinertz from Saarland University want to open up new avenues of research into the Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria and prepare a historical-critical complete edition of his works. Kleinertz is an expert in Spanish music history and, together with computer scientist Meinard Müller from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, has been leading a German Research Foundation (DFG) project on the computer-aided analysis of harmonic structures since 2014.

With his current workshop, the musicologist from Saarbrücken is bringing together computer scientists and musicologists from Spain and Germany with other specialists. The researchers are discussing which methods can be used to analyze the musical structures in Tomás Luis de Victoria's work.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (ca. 1548, Ávila - 1611, Madrid) is considered a central composer of the Spanish Siglo de oro. He worked in Rome for a long time, had close ties to Germany and finally returned to Madrid.

The workshop currently being held is entitled "Musicology and computer science in dialog: Problems of transmission and possibilities of analyzing works by Tomás Luis de Victoria (ca. 1548-1611)".

More info: www.uni-saarland.de/musikwissenschaft

The projects launched between 2013 and 2015 will be continued, according to a press release from the cantonal government. In addition, a museum strategy will strengthen the cantonal museums for future challenges and the expansion of outreach programs will improve access to culture in the canton of Thurgau: Gaps in offerings are to be closed and institutions supported in the development of outreach programs.

The cultural concept provides information on the criteria for the allocation of resources from the lottery fund. It shows how the funds from the state account and the lottery fund are used for cultural and charitable organizations.

The annual contributions from the state account will increase minimally due to the increasing share of the Canton of Thurgau in the Eastern Switzerland Cultural Burden Equalization Scheme from the previous CHF 1,866,100 to CHF 1,889,600 per year. The annually recurring contributions from the lottery fund will increase from CHF 2,548,500 to CHF 2,666,000, in particular due to the two newly set development goals.

In addition, the framework credit for one-off cultural projects will be increased from CHF 2.3 million to CHF 3 million based on past experience. Whether the framework credit is used up depends on the applications to the lottery fund and is still only a theoretical figure.

The concept can be downloaded at:
www.tg.ch/documents/Kulturkonzept_2016_2018.pdf

The choice was made after a selection process lasting almost two years with over 270 applications. Huppert will already conduct two concerts in the 2015/16 season: on December 8, 2015 and January 30, 2016.

Daniel Huppert initially studied cello and conducting as well as musicology and German studies in Saarbrücken and then continued his studies in Weimar at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. This was followed by postgraduate studies in concert performance.

In 2010, he won the 2nd German Operetta Prize for Young Conductors at Leipzig Opera. He won the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig Conducting Competition and the International Lutoslawski Competition for Young Conductors in Poland in 2011.
Until the end of 2010, he was engaged as "Assistant du chef d'orchestre" at the Opéra national de Paris (Bastille).

Daniel Huppert was a fellow of the Conductors' Forum of the German Music Council. In the 2015/16 season, Daniel Huppert will conduct the new production of "The Tales of Hoffmann" at the Komische Oper Berlin, directed by Barry Kosky.

The aim of the new group is to strengthen networking and improve communication of the concerns of girls' choirs. The network aims to "showcase the strengths of young female singers and draw attention to the unequal treatment of boys' and girls' choirs that exists in many places".

Among others, Anna Katharina Kalmbach, Luzerner Kantorei, Martina van Lengerich, Mädchenkantorei Freiburg DE, Marina Niedel, Mädchenkantorei Basel, Gerd Rixmann, Mädchenchor Wiesbaden DE and Lea Scherer, Solothurner Mädchenchor.

The group is open to all interested managers from the sector and a follow-up meeting is planned for February 2016.

Info:
afintelmann@maedchenkantorei.ch

"How is the Swiss Youth Music Competition doing?" Gerd Albrecht, chief conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich from 1975 to 1980 and founder of the Swiss Youth Music Competition (SJMW)would have received a gratifying answer if he had been able to attend the anniversary matinee at the Tonhalle Zurich on September 13. The question of how the SJMW was doing was always at the top of the agenda for their meetings, recalled Bobby Keller, the then Commercial Director of the Tonhalle Orchestra and now Honorary President of the SJMW. While the initial focus was on promoting young talent for Swiss orchestras, the competition has adapted to developments in musical life and opened up accordingly. What has remained the same is the quality of the support, which focuses on the jury's discussions with the competition participants, their teachers and parents.

The competition showed its best side this morning. Speakers paid tribute to its development and significance. The commemorative publication designed for the occasion offered a successful snapshot of the SJMW from the perspectives of various players. And the focus was, of course, on the music. Current and former prizewinners from four decades were presented in a Program which was held together in its diversity by a fine tonal thread and thus represented the entire range of variation of the SJMW. Supposed contrasts were obsolete; the focus was solely on the music.

Finally, there was one piece of news: The new President of the Foundation Board from 2016 will be the current President of the Tonhalle Society, Martin Vollenwyder. This brings the competition a little closer to its starting point.

www.sjmw.ch

Spaniard Francisco López Martín was awarded second prize and the Audience Award. His compatriot Eduardo Belmar came third.

Jacot is the winner of the 2013 Kobe Competition, among others. In 2014 he won the Carl Nielsen International Flute Competition. Between 2006 and 2008, he was assistant principal flute of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, then principal flute of the Saito Kinen Festival and principal flute of the Geneva ensemble Contrechamps. This year he has been appointed Principal Flute of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig.

In the trombone category, 22-year-old British HKB student Michael Buchanan won over the jury. He won first prize and the audience prize (the SMZ reported). The second prize went to Jonathan Reith from France. Guilhem Kusnierek from France was awarded third prize.

The online course "From Ink to Sound" deals with theoretical and practical aspects of writing down music and sheds light on the development of music notation from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

Matteo Nanni and Angelika Moths from the Department of Musicology at the University of Basel show how music was recorded in manuscripts, how it was decoded and transcribed into modern notation. Musicians from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis have made over 15 recordings especially for the course - including a music manuscript from the Basel University Library, which has been transcribed and performed for the first time in 700 years.

The course is aimed at musicians with an interest in music paleography as well as students and those interested in music, history, philology, theology, art history and semiotics. The only prerequisite for students is that they are familiar with the modern notation system.

Website: www.futurelearn.com/courses/from-ink-to-sound

The Codex Gisle is a gradual, i.e. a choir book for the daily singing of the Mass. It originates from the Cistercian nunnery Marienbrunn in Rulle, north of Osnabrück, and was created there around 1300.

It is highly unusual that the names of the artist and scribe are known: In red ink, Sister Gisela von Kerssenbrock, a member of an old Westphalian noble family, signed the gradual in several places with an adoring nun and the words "Gisle". Gisela was the cantrix or song mistress of the convent, taught her fellow nuns to sing and was responsible for the production of the musical manuscripts. She created the book decorations, wrote texts and sheet music and donated the Codex Gisle their convent in Rulle, where it was in uninterrupted use for around 500 years.

Unusual at the Codex Gisle is also its immense variety of images: with 53 pictorial initials, it surpasses other graduals by more than double. The ornamental letters are magnificently decorated and show the most important stages in the life of Jesus in sometimes unusual scenes.

The Quaternio publishing house in Lucerne has discovered this most beautiful Lower Saxon-Westphalian manuscript from the period between 1250 and 1400 in the Osnabrück diocesan archives and is making it accessible to a wide audience through its facsimile edition.
The elaborate facsimile edition will be accompanied by a scholarly commentary volume; a music edition of selected chants is also planned.

In the exhibition Golden splendor for heavenly songs - The facsimile edition of the Codex Gisle in Kloster Eberbach (D-65346 Eltville im Rheingau, opening hours: daily 10 am - 6 pm), the facsimile edition is on display until October 29, 2015 - in individual pages and for browsing.

Facsimile Codex Gisle: 172 leaves in the original format of 35.5 x 26 cm with 53 initials, leather binding with corner fittings, in linen case, commentary volume, edition: 480 copies, ISBN 978-3-905924-20-6, Fr. 12 400.-; documentation folder with two original facsimile leaves and information brochure, Fr. 124.-.
www.quaternio.ch