The LAC's concert and theater hall is clad entirely in wood. Its stage consists of an acoustic shell with modular sliding elements. In addition to the hall, the LAC also houses the Museo d'Arte della Svizzera Italiana, which brings together the Museo Cantonale d'Arte and the Museo d'Arte della città di Lugano.

The LAC will be inaugurated in September with three renditions of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana and the RSI Choir under the direction of Vladimir Ashkenazy, as well as nine performances of "La Verità" by Compagnia Finzi Pasca.

The 2500 square meter museum houses a permanent collection and a modular space over two floors for temporary exhibitions. It brings together works from all over the world. The opening exhibition "Orizzonte Nord-Sud" features 150 exhibits - including works by Giacometti, Segantini, Klee and Turner.

Website of the center: www.luganolac.ch

As the population grows, urban space becomes scarcer and sound spaces become denser. Despite this, architecture and urban planning pay little attention to acoustic changes to spaces and places, with visual aspects taking center stage. Yet it is important for our well-being that visual and auditory sensory impressions are given equal consideration in the design of indoor and outdoor spaces.

Experience shows that negative room acoustics are often only corrected retrospectively with aesthetically questionable and costly measures. If the sound qualities of existing places and new spaces were taken into account at an early stage and suitable forms and materials were chosen for the design, the acoustic facets of a city could be positively influenced in a targeted manner. Ideally, places and spaces worth listening to would be created - a city that sounds good and can contribute to a higher quality of life in urban areas.

The exhibition "KlangRaum - RaumKlang" aims to sharpen our understanding of the auditory perception of space and materials. It presents sound installations by experts from the fields of audio design, corporate sound and acoustic spatial staging. The program of the lecture evenings includes twelve presentations by renowned architects, acousticians, authors and musicians, who will address the topic of spatial sound from various specialist perspectives.

Info:
KlangRaum - RaumKlang. Auditory perception of space and materials, lecture series and panel event at schauraum-b, Austrasse 24, Basel. August 20 - December 10, 2015, Mon - Fri, 8 am to 12 noon and 2 pm to 5 pm. Admission free.
 

At the end of 2014, the special-purpose association decided to fund the Lucerne Festival and the Swiss Museum of Transport from 2015, in addition to the existing funding for the Lucerne Theater, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Lucerne Art Museum. The Cantonal Council already approved this further development of the special-purpose association in March 2015 - in conjunction with an amendment to the Culture Promotion Act. The referendum deadline expired unused in May 2015.

In accordance with the Culture Promotion Act, the decision of the special-purpose association as to which institutions are to receive contributions is also subject to approval by the City of Lucerne. The City Council submits a report and motion to the City Council to approve the special-purpose association's decision. This further development of the special-purpose association will save the city around CHF 0.9 million per year, as envisaged in the 2020 cultural agenda.

In the term of office from 2015 to 2019 (beginning July 1, 2015), City Councillor Ursula Stämmer-Horst and Rosie Bitterli Mucha, Head of Culture and Sport, will continue to represent the city's interests in the special-purpose association as delegates. Councillor Ursula Stämmer-Horst will hold this office until she steps down as a councillor on August 31, 2016.
 

Musik Olar AG and its resellers had agreed that the price list published by the general importer for stringed instruments and accessories of various brands was binding in nature, subject to the discount policy communicated. According to the Federal Administration's press release, this constituted an unlawful agreement on minimum prices.

These agreements prevented resellers in Switzerland from engaging in genuine price competition. As a result, competition in this sector in Switzerland was significantly impaired from the beginning of 2010 until mid-2013. As part of an amicable settlement, Musik Olar AG has undertaken not to exert any direct or indirect influence on the sales prices of its retailers in future. The decision can be appealed to the Federal Administrative Court.

The winner, Po-Cheng Tsai from Taiwan, will be able to work on a contemporary piece with the Lucerne ensemble in the 2016/17 season. The entire jury also awarded the young choreographer 1st prize for his piece "Hugin/Munin".

Kathleen McNurney was elected to the jury of the Copenhagen International Choreography Competition (CICC) in 2013, writes the Lucerne Theater. The CICC aims to discover and promote new talent in contemporary choreography. It was launched in 2008 and has been held annually ever since.

With over 200 applicants each year, the CICC has already hosted performances from more than 35 countries. This year's competition took place on August 7 and 8, 2015 at the Dansehallerne Copenhagen in Denmark.

More and more orchestras and instrumentalists are producing their own recordings these days. According to the company's press release, Idagio gives them "for the first time the opportunity to make current recordings or their archives easily available via a platform specially created for classical music".

In addition to a curated catalog already comprising several thousand hours of recordings by Karajan, Bernstein, Szell, Solti, Furtwängler, Böhm, Giulini, Maria Callas, Arthur Rubinstein and many others, the partners are represented with numerous recordings under conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sir Andrew Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Lorin Maazel, Sir Charles Mackerras, Georges Prêtre and Franz Welser-Möst.

In June 2015, Idagio received an investment from Australian private equity investor Macquarie Capital, the European investor network b-to-v and other business angels.

More info: www.idagio.com
 

Basel has often hosted original festivals of new music. For example, the grandiose "European Music Month 2001" or Gidon Kremer's "Les Muséiques", a festival that mainly took place in museums. Now Baselland and Baselstadt have joined forces on the initiative of Beat Gysin to realize the "local" biennial ZeitRäume Basel. Gysin presides over the Zeiträume association, which is responsible for the festival. At the press conference on June 23 in Laufen, festival director Bernhard Günther presented the diverse and exciting program

The concept is captivating: new music conquers new spaces and a new audience. It is also convincing in terms of quality. Renowned composers write pieces for unconventional concert spaces, incorporating the spaces into the compositions. And various school classes and music schools from the city and countryside as well as students from the Music Academy are involved in the productions in original ways.

A total of around 1000 participants will perform in the two Basel venues, and over 20 indoor and outdoor spaces will be acoustically illuminated over the four days of the festival, including the Basel Minster including the cloister and forecourt, the historic city center of Laufenburg, the Volkshaus, the Badischer Bahnhof station concourse, the State Archives, an open hall in the Rhine harbor area, the Lachsländerhof, the Alte Aula in the Natural History Museum and the Stadtcasino.

What is particularly striking about this first Biennale is the mixture of professionals and amateurs, of international greats and local forces. The program includes leading international composers such as Georg Friedrich Haas, Dieter Schnebel, James Clarke and Karlheinz Stockhausen as well as Swiss artists Beat Furrer, Daniel Ott and Edu Haubensak. Organizers such as the Basel Symphony Orchestra or the renowned quartets that perform the "Hofkonzerte" are for once involved in educational concepts for primary school pupils and music students. This togetherness, which will be revealed in the most unconventional places in Basel, should give the festival a grandiose appeal.

The various sound installations are an important part of this music festival. For example, the Swiss Architecture Museum will be showing the exhibition The Sound of Architecture from September 4. Berlin-based composer Peter Ablinger and the Electronic Studio of the Basel Music Academy are developing a concept specially tailored to the ears in the exhibition rooms.

In the backyard of the Music Academy, you can experience Walter Fähndrich's music installation Sunset, which immerses the courtyard in sound colors subtly attuned to the location. Uncomfortable music can be found on Theaterplatz with a "walk-in audio piece" by Peter Ablinger, which turns the sounds of the city into a staged experience. Or the mysterious Tunnel Spiral in the tunnel of the City parking garage, in which young composers from Basel create an interactive sound installation.

The exponents of new music, who are often regarded as elitist, will conquer everyday spaces, as four schoolchildren did at the press conference in Laufen, playing everyday objects. Squatting on a bucket of water, they turned orange plastic buckets with wooden mallets into percussion instruments, an impressive performance in terms of dramaturgy and concentration.

Under the direction of Sylwia Zytynska, around 300 pupils will take part in the Biennale itself, acoustically occupying not only the pretty "Stetli" in Laufen, but also Freiestrasse in the city of Basel. The mayor Alexander Imhof, who was present, was justifiably proud of the enthusiasm for music in Laufen's schools.

> www.zeitraeumebasel.com
 

The festival takes place on September 5 and 6 in the old town and city center of the bilingual Bernese metropolis of Biel. Highlights include a gala concert with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and the great Schubert Mass on a town square. Anyone who wants to can sing along.

The language issue is also reflected in the program: For this year's edition, contributions were sought that deal with bilingualism and mediate between German and French in musical and, if necessary, linguistic form.

The Schubertiade has been organized by the public cultural broadcaster Espace 2 as a popular classical music festival since 1978, and is held in a different Swiss city every two years. In Biel, the largest bilingual city in Switzerland, around 1500 musicians will perform 150 concerts at around 15 locations.

More info: www.schubertiade.ch

Extensive music libraries are a prerequisite for the streaming concept. As a rule, no service disappoints here. In their sample test, the Chip-experts can find up to 85% of all albums and around 95% of singles - including chart music, indie tracks and alternative titles. However, acoustic gaps often cannot be filled anywhere, as some artists reject the streaming model or conclude exclusive contracts with individual providers.

Price models and quality
The cost structure of the providers hardly differs: for a continuous subscription price of 10 euros per month, users not only play files endlessly via PC and cell phone, but also save favorites on their mobile device at the same time. Music can thus be listened to on the go without a network connection or load. In terms of quality, the services have no weaknesses. At up to 320 kilobits per second, the sound quality is very good and can hardly be distinguished from CD sound.

According to the museum, two historical pianos fell victim to the fire, a square piano and a grand piano from the 19th century. Other objects were severely damaged in some cases.

Ringve is the central institution for music and musical instruments in Norway and the only specialized museum in this field in the country. It was founded in 1952.

Today, the museum's collection comprises almost 2000 musical instruments from all over the world. Ringve is also responsible for several hundred instruments deposited with it by other museums and private individuals, including historical piano instruments, classical stringed instruments and parts of the ethnographic collection.

The collection of piano instruments includes an unsigned Italian virginal from around 1600, a spinet from around 1700, a large selection of clavichords from the 18th century, a harpsichord by Jacob Kirkman from 1867, a fortepiano signed by J. A. Stein in 1783 and by Congrad Graf in 1826 as well as a piano harp by Chr. Dietz from 1870.

At the same time, researchers from the Music & Health Lab led by clinical biopsychologist Urs Nater measured the stress hormone cortisol. The data suggests that the stress-reducing effect of music does not depend on the music itself, but on the reasons for listening to it.

The data shows that whenever music was played to relax the test subjects not only reported lower stress levels, but also lower cortisol levels in their saliva. This was particularly the case in the late afternoon and evening. The type of music (e.g. sad or happy, calming or activating), on the other hand, had no influence on the subjectively perceived stress after listening to music.

However, a different correlation emerged here: music that was described as calming predicted a lower alpha-amylase concentration in saliva, regardless of the reason for listening to music. Alongside cortisol, alpha-amylase is another biomarker for stress, but it is obviously produced by the body under different conditions.

Original article:
Linnemann, A., Ditzen, B., Strahler, J., Doerr, J. M., & Nater, U. M. (2015). Music listening as a means of stress reduction in daily life. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 60, 82-90.
doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.06.008.
 

With sensitive musical interventions, Peter Scherer has succeeded in building a bridge between the viewer and the protagonist without imposing a particular direction or even using any clichés, writes the Suisa Foundation.

The jury also praised the synthesis of Giger's work and Scherer's music. The sometimes electronic, sometimes acoustic sounds merged with the fantastic imagery of HR Giger's home environment in Zurich Oerlikon. "Enlightening and frightening at the same time, fascinating and multi-layered, just like Giger's art".

The award ceremony will take place on August 7, 2015 as part of the Locarno International Film Festival. Scherer previously received the prize in 2007 (for the film music to "Marmorera"). Other previous winners include Roman Lerch, Thomas Fischer, Michael Sauter, Niki Reiser and Marcel Vaid.

Of the 30,000 tickets sold, 39 percent went over the counter during the festival. 11,000 visitors took part in the free events. According to Kim Gaynor, the Verbier Festival's administrative director, ticket prices have not risen. However, the strong Swiss franc caused additional costs for residents of the eurozone, who make up 20 to 30 percent of the festival audience.

The number of viewers watching the festival on the internet is growing all the time, according to the organizers. This year, the concerts broadcast on medici.tv broke all records. Valery Gergiev's concert was watched by 34,000 viewers (the previous record holder was Martha Argerich, who brought 22,100 viewers to the screen three years ago).

They also criticize "a lack of transparency in the settlements" and speak of discrimination against creative services on the music market. With this appeal, the German professional music associations are joining the demands of the worldwide International Council of Authors in Music Collecting Societies (CIAM) that after a deduction of 20 percent of streaming revenues for the music services, the remaining 80 percent should be distributed equally, i.e. 40 percent to labels and artists on the one hand and 40 percent to authors and publishers on the other.

According to the appeal, the 15 largest steaming services such as Apple, Spotify, Deezer, Napster and Wimp generated sales of over 100 million euros in Germany in the first half of 2015 alone, according to the music industry. 2.5 million Germans already use monthly subscriptions for 9 to 10 euros. In three years, market researchers expect 12 million streaming customers in Germany alone. On the global market, the use of paid subscription services for music is growing by almost 40 percent and accounts for 23 percent of the digital market.

In over 37 countries around the world, the share of streaming is already greater than the share of downloads. For composers, lyricists, music publishers and artists too, this could turn into a million-dollar grave, because although streaming services are taking millions of euros worldwide, they are not giving creatives a fair share. The largest share of streaming revenues would be taken by the multinational recording companies, who would often only pass on small portions to their artists.

There were a total of 625 applications from 56 countries and five continents, of which 232 soloists and piano duos were invited to Munich following the anonymous evaluation of submitted recordings by a preliminary jury.

Listed as Swiss representatives are Sébastian Jacot, Anja Kreuzer and Héléna Macherel in the flute category and Jardena Flückiger in the voice category. Louise Anna Pollock is listed as a Swedish-Swiss participant in the trombone category.

The trombone category will kick off the competition on August 31 at the BR-Funkhaus. The trombonists are taking part for only the sixth time in the history of the competition. The ARD Music Competition is a rare opportunity for wind players in particular to present themselves as soloists. In the popular singing category, on the other hand, the best young artists are being sought for the 38th time this year.

The competition ends with the prizewinners' concerts on September 16, 17 and 18 in the Prinzregententheater and the Herkulessaal of the Residenz. From the semi-finals onwards, the musicians will be accompanied by three renowned orchestras: the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

In 2016, the subjects double bass, harp, horn and string quartet will be performed in Munich, and in 2017 violin, oboe, piano and guitar.