With libreo.ch, social science publishers are bringing their books and journals together in one central location in order to make them available to researchers and a broad readership and to give them greater international visibility. Digital books and journals are offered on libreo.ch in open access or for a fee, and printed editions of the journals and books will soon also be available to order.

According to the initiators, Libreo.ch is one of the few platforms in Switzerland that offers books and journals in xml format with automated import. The format increases visibility and promotes searching. So far, 127 books and 7 journals are available. Over the next few months, the number of books and journals is set to rise sharply and new publishers and institutions are expected to join the platform.

libreo.ch is run by the Swiss Association of Publishers in the Humanities and Social Sciences (SVGW), which was established as an association in April 2015 and is made up of around 20 publishers.

More info: https://libreo.ch

Despite some crises in the music business, at least one genre has been experiencing a striking crescendo for several decades: film music. Not only in the way it is viewed and evaluated (even by musicologists and new music), but also in the concert hall. The 21st Century Orchestra from Lucerne has done pioneering work in this country, accompanying recent films live since 1999 under the direction of Ludwig Wicki. Most orchestras have long since followed their example. And that's a good thing. Because this movement compensates for what cinemas no longer achieve since almost all Cinemascope auditoriums have been dismembered. The great experience of being surrounded by images and sound with eyes and ears wide open has been lost. This is how a genre is being recaptured.

But it can also be taken further, as the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra now shows. The result is a new, independent film set to vivid and emotionally intense music, which was by no means intended to accompany a film, by a composer who himself has a wealth of experience with film, gained over decades in a wide variety of genres. The South African artist William Kentridge, a master of many classes, and his team created the film Oh, to Believe in Another World to the 10th Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich, who already accompanied silent films in Leningrad as a young pianist.

How should one illustrate this? The Tenth, composed in 1953 after Stalin's death, is regarded as a bitter portrait of the dictator, which is particularly true of the exaggerated second movement. According to conductor Michael Sanderling, the first movement depicts the state of society; in the third, the composer tells of himself. One may also recognize hope in the tragic beauty of the work. Shostakovich himself was rather vague about the specific content: "I wanted to express human feelings and passions in this work."

You could imagine this to be quite striking - or accompanied by old documentary footage. However, the starting point for Kentridge was not a plot, but rather the play with small cardboard figures acting in an "abandoned Soviet museum", which admittedly only exists in a cardboard format, as it was placed on the studio table. It was filmed with a miniature camera, in the style of an animated film. In addition, there were actors, some of whom recreated the play of figures in life-size: Shostakovich and his pupil Elmira Nasirova, the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and his lover Lilia Brik as well as the three revolutionaries Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. The film team developed the scenes for the music from the footage, although they do not follow any discernible chronology.

The 1920s - rather than the 1950s, when the symphony was composed - are the historical point of reference for Kentridge. And for an important reason: he did not want to show the depression that prevailed under Stalin, but rather the ambivalence of feelings in the face of the socialist awakening in the young Soviet Union and the disillusionment that soon followed. Emblematic of this is the figure of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, who accompanied the movement with enthusiastic, brash verses, but then committed suicide in 1930 in disappointment. Kentridge compiled a text from his poems and dramas, which appears in the picture and speaks in sentences of hope and disillusionment. The title also comes from this Oh, to Believe in Another World (Oh, if only I could believe in a different world).

However, the film also refers to the aesthetics of the 1920s, to expressive futurism and to the Russian silent films of the time. Several times one feels reminded of the fast and boldly edited film The new Babylon which Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg shot in 1929 and for which Shostakovich wrote a fantastic score. The sometimes unstable changing colors, the scratched surfaces and the slightly shaky titles also refer to the film quality of the time. Numerous documentary shots are inserted between the images. The result is a grandiose arc of images, a kaleidoscopic ballet of figures. Kentridge says that he did not want to degrade the symphony to film music, but the image becomes almost overpowering due to the many rapidly changing visual events. It is therefore a good thing that the emotions of the image hardly attempt to compete with those of the music. A plot is only hinted at. It is convincing, for example, that the portrait of Stalin is omitted from the second movement. We see propaganda footage of the time (also with the young Shostakovich), but these appear to be distanced by a stage effect. Kentridge also said that he wanted to ask questions with his film. However, the way the third movement is visualized is problematic. The composer portrays himself with his tone letters (D-S-C-H). Kentridge brings a supposed love story with Nasirova into focus, discreetly, but unnecessarily, because it trivializes the situation.

The score itself remained largely untouched. Only the fact that the orchestra and the conductor are forced to work to a certain tempo because the film has been completed may be seen as a limitation. However, this is more likely to affect future performers. The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under its conductor Michael Sanderling took on this challenge in mid-June at the Culture and Convention Center Lucerne (KKL) with enormous verve, i.e. with energy and passion.

Incidentally, the last few images of the movie show a kind of satyr dance of all the characters (including the dictators), as if it goes on forever. They dance, as the text says, over what is left of Europe. This has suddenly become depressingly topical again.

With this piece, Robin Michel has simultaneously created a new type of instrument and user interface that, thanks to its innovative concept, creates "the possibility of an incredibly exciting sound generation". Because the instrument can be assembled with the help of a 3D printer, an Arduino UNO and materials from the DIY store, a highly democratic and low-threshold approach is guaranteed.

The jury was made up of: Svetlana Maraš, Roman Brotbeck, Johannes Kreidler and Uli Fussenegger (chair).

Youtube page on "Forms":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg-MFRyyevU

With this piece, Robin Michel has simultaneously created a new type of instrument and user interface that, thanks to its innovative concept, creates "the possibility of an incredibly exciting sound generation". Because the instrument can be assembled with the help of a 3D printer, an Arduino UNO and materials from the DIY store, a highly democratic and low-threshold approach is guaranteed.

The jury was made up of: Svetlana Maraš, Roman Brotbeck, Johannes Kreidler and Uli Fussenegger (chair).

Youtube page on "Forms":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg-MFRyyevU

IG Musik Basel writes that the fact that the initiative is ready for submission after such a short time can be seen as a sign from the electorate: they are ready for a public discussion about whether the current distribution of funding is still compatible with the diverse society.

A fundamental discussion was the goal of IG Musik Basel from the very beginning. This has never been held to date: The last 40 years have shown that no real debate in the area of cultural funding is triggered if more support money is simply demanded. The status quo is only questioned when one considers what appropriate public funding should look like with the funds already available.

IG Musik Basel has compiled a dossier with all the information on the initiative and the current situation. It also sheds light on the funding situation in other cities in comparison.

Link to the dossier:
https://musikvielfalt.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Musikvielfalt.pdf

Bach for children? That's not exactly obvious. After all, Bach's music is complex and can quickly become overwhelming. In the workshops as part of "Discover Bach! - The Bach Festival for Children", however, it is important to project manager Sophie Ehrismann to involve children in the workshops. She has a lot of experience with children's choirs and dance workshops and, as a sought-after dance teacher, also runs further training courses in "Music and Movement" at the Zurich University of the Arts.

And now discover Bach through "beatboxing" or "action painting". How is that supposed to work? A visit on site - the workshops took place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Schaffhausen Music School - opened up interesting and intuitively playful approaches. Miguel Camero, who incidentally made it to the quarter-finals at the first Beatbox World Championships in Leipzig in 2005, was responsible for the beatboxing.

You can see how beatboxing works on YouTube, Camero explains it clearly: you "only make sounds, noises and rhythms with your mouth", i.e. with your mouth, nose and breath. This is how you imitate a drum kit. Camero admits right at the beginning of our conversation that beatboxing with Bach's music is impossible and that his music is too difficult for children. "But I told them about Bach and how he worked." Bach invented music, he says, and they are now doing the same. After the beatboxing, which Camero combined with the piano, one girl said spontaneously: "I like that. Now I know that I want to learn to play the piano!"

Another workshop offered action painting to Bach's music. For Sophie Ehrismann, the combination of music and movement is an important pedagogical element. So it was all the more surprising that this workshop was led by Linda Graedel, a well-known illustrator and draughtswoman in Schaffhausen, who has never done action painting before and is the wise old age of 81.

Drawings by Graedel hang in the stairwell of the music school; they are full of movement and show musicians in action. The studio is located in the attic. A large "color board" is set up in the middle of the room, an oversized paint box, and there are three large brushes next to each pot of paint. Linda Graedel gives clear instructions: "You are only allowed to pick up one identical color at a time with a brush and then paint your fantasy pattern on white paper. The colors must remain pure, they must not be mixed, a change of color also means a change of brush."

The tables, at which the children work standing up, are set up in a circle. The children walk back and forth between the color board and their white sheet and are completely free to choose what they want to paint. Bach's music is played over the loudspeakers: a piece for piano, a concerto grosso, a choral work. There is silence, no one speaks except the teacher, who occasionally gives technical instructions on brushwork.

The children move intuitively to the beat of the music, even as they walk to the board. They paint with large brushes, the page fills with wavy lines and dabs, one boy guides the brush very rhythmically in a zigzag line and says: "I've assigned a different color to each instrument I hear: I use green for the strings, violet for the piano and blue for the harpsichord." His jagged lines look like an abstract counterpoint. It's amazing how calm and absorbed the children are, the time flies by.

The most elaborate school project took place a week before the actual Bach Festival: "SingBach" at the Schanz elementary school in Stein am Rhein. Principal Vreni Winzeler turned it into a project week for the whole school. Friedhilde Trüün launched "SingBach" with the support of the Stuttgart International Bach Academy and acts as artistic director. Her main aim is to get schoolchildren interested in Bach's music.

Trüün spent a week rehearsing with the 350 children, in the morning with the first to third graders and in the afternoon with the fourth to sixth graders. In the semi-public final concert for relatives in the Stein am Rhein town church, they then sang - together with their teachers and accompanied by a jazz ensemble - Bach's best-known pieces, carefully selected chorales and arias from Bach's passions, as well as instrumental "hits" with lyrics. These were arranged for the children by Frank Schlichter.

The texts that Trüün set to the instrumental pieces are crucial for the children's enjoyment and understanding. In the minuet, for example, they sang: "Ring, my little melody, swing upwards like never before. Bach invented you and made the song that everyone likes. So everyone sing along happily, because this little song is a hit ..."

Researchers from the University of Hamburg and Kühne Logistics University have investigated the effects of the pandemic on music consumption and spending on music in Germany. The surprising finding: not only has the consumption of live music fallen to practically zero during the pandemic, Germans also listened to around three hours less music at home in 2020/21 than before the pandemic began.

Radio in particular lost listeners, while premium streaming benefited. Weekly spending on music fell drastically by almost half. At the same time, many are prepared to spend money on live music in online format.

Radio consumption alone fell from around 10.5 to eight hours per week. Possible reasons for this phenomenon: for many, listening to music seems to be strongly linked to mobility - for example, driving to work in the car. Added to this is the strong competition for entertainment from social media offerings or video streaming at home.

Literature reference:
Denk J., Burmester A., Kandziora M., Clement M. (2022): The impact of COVID-19 on music consumption and music spending. PLOS ONE 17(5): e0267640. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267640

Born in 1995 in San Vicente de Tagua Tagua (Chile), Luis Toro Araya studied violin at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Chile and at the Modern School of Music with Alberto Dourthé Castrillón. From 2014 to 2017 he was a member of the National Symphony Orchestra of Chile. In 2015, he began his conducting studies with conductors such as Jorge Rotter, Leonidrin, Garrett Keast and Helmuth Reichel Silva, with whom he regularly works as an assistant on various projects in Chile and Europe.

He was a finalist for the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award 2021, where he conducted the Camerata Salzburg at the 100th anniversary of the Salzburg Festival. He has also just been appointed assistant conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra for the 2022/23 season.

The International Conducting Competition Rotterdam (ICCR) is organized by the International Conducting Competition Rotterdam Foundation in close cooperation with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and De Doelen. In five rounds with different orchestras and themes, from classical to contemporary, the conductors demonstrate their skills.

A virgin dances herself to death during a sacrificial ritual so that a rich harvest may be reaped in the fall. The pseudo-archaic subject matter of the ballet Le Sacre du Printemps together with Vaslav Nijinsky's deliberately primitive choreography, provoked one of the most notorious scandals in music history and made the composer Igor Stravinsky world-famous in one fell swoop. However, this is material that no longer attracts anyone from behind the stove and, above all, no young people to the dance stage. War, climate and refugees are the topics that move us.

At least that Musikkollegium Winterthur come to this conclusion. In the context of "Le Grand Rituel"a festival that revives the twenties and thirties from June 4 to 18, together with the Iberacademy Orchestra Medellín and around 80 young people, it is bringing back this very era. Sacre on stage. The pupils from Wetzikon, Zurich and Winterthur were to be introduced to classical music with this project, for which they rehearsed for a year - and few pieces in the repertoire are as suitable for this as the Sacre. For if the period after the First World War, the time that "Le Grand Rituel" celebrates, was one of artistic awakening to the modern age, then the 1913 Sacre as a kind of starting signal for this development. This music, which explores extremes, still sounds fresher and more modern than much of what was written later.

In the Sacre 2022as choreographer Josef Eder calls the community dance project, the individual parts were renamed and given current themes: Germ, Awakening in the Here and Now - Accusation and Self-empowerment - Initiation - Test of Strength ... But you didn't actually need the titles to understand what it's all about. Because even before the actual performance on June 10 in the foyer of Hall 53 of the former foundry on the Sulzer site, the prologue made everything clear. While the audience was still comfortably sipping their beers, ragged figures with dirt-smeared faces mingled with the crowd in pairs, accompanied by an instrumentalist from the Iberacademyand presented the reality of life for refugees and refugee children. They administered vital water to each other drop by drop or shrieked heart-rendingly. And it was here, or more than here, that one became aware of the problem of the evening due to the external circumstances. The audience, which consisted mainly of families and friends of the protagonists, did not allow the urgency of the message to distract them from the good atmosphere and the Cüpli and visibly enjoyed watching the hustle and bustle of the offspring. With so much concentration on the messengers, the message faded completely into the background.

That was a shame, because the message was presented with considerable effort and quite skillful tricks. For example, the ragged figures united towards the end of the prologue and chanted slogans - "Tanks roll, children die" - rhythmically accentuated and with the same shifts in emphasis that are typical of Stravinsky's music. The actual choreography cleverly replaced the sacrificial ritual with mass scenes, making the war appear as what it is: an oversized ritual in which not individual virgins but whole masses of people are led to the altar. And a simple net hanging from the ceiling became a symbol of insurmountable boundaries and irresolvable entanglements.

The evening was also convincing thanks to the performance of the two orchestras. The Iberacademy, an orchestra that introduces Latin American young people to music and prepares them for the music profession, together with the Musikkollegium under the direction of Roberto González-Monjas, developed the necessary pressure to carry the young dancers through the evening. This was already evident in the opening piece, which fitted perfectly into the setting The iron foundry by Alexander Mossolow. You may have heard it more differentiated, which was certainly also due to the acoustics of the industrial hall, but the wild force of the moment immediately made you forget such objections. The exuberant final applause was biased, but certainly not undeserved. What remains for the performance the day after and the Closing gala on June 18 The only hope is that a somewhat more neutral audience will also appreciate the message.

The Bern Puppet Theater and the Freiraum / Heitere Fahne collective will now receive a tripartite contract and the Bern Music Festival a municipal contract. The Bern Chamber Orchestra will no longer be supported by a tripartite contract. Together with the canton of Berne, the city wants to introduce new orchestra funding. All orchestras that meet certain professional criteria can apply for a four-year sponsorship in response to a public invitation to tender.

The municipal council focuses on sustainability in cultural production when promoting culture. Diversity and cultural diversity will be emphasized in greater depth. In order to facilitate access to funding, funding and expertise will be combined: A pool of expertise from additional areas will be created from the existing specialist commissions. The public consultation on the Cultural Dispatch will last until August 21, 2022.

For the years 2024-2027, the municipal council is focusing on sustainability as a cross-cutting theme in cultural promotion. The aim is for culture in Bern to be produced, presented and evaluated as sustainably as possible. The municipal council is paying particular attention to the social security of cultural professionals, process-oriented cultural promotion and the question of how the ecological footprint of cultural production can be reduced. The municipal council intends to deepen the focus on diversity and cultural diversity that already exists in the current cultural message.

For the years 2024-2027, CHF 33,029,534 per year is available for direct cultural promotion. Compared to the previous period, which saw growth of around 10 percent, this corresponds to a reduction of around 1.8 percent or CHF 605,000.

More info:
https://www.bern.ch/mediencenter/medienmitteilungen/aktuell_ptk/kulturbotschaft-2024-2027-start-der-oeffentlichen-vernehmlassung

The grants in the music category go to the following projects: Fischermanns Orchestra: "Blue Sky Tour 22", (CHF 20,000); Hobo Ho: "Hobo Ho & Guests @ Gewerbehalle" (CHF 20,000); Siselabonga: "EP Production + Tour" (CHF 20,000). A total of 13 applications were assessed.

In the second call for proposals in 2022, production grants will also be awarded for music projects. The contributions for the "Music" call will be awarded for overall projects that are realized from January 2023 and the associated expenses for promotion and distribution. A total contribution of CHF 60,000 is available.

More info:
https://kultur.lu.ch/Ausschreibungen/Selektive_Foerderung
 

Rodolfo Fischer began his musical career as a pianist and later focused on conducting. After completing his studies at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Chile, he continued his studies on a scholarship at the Mannes College of Music in New York, where he was a student of pianist Richard Goode. He was then accepted into Otto Werner Muller's conducting class at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he obtained a degree in orchestral conducting.

Johannes Knoll, born in 1987 in Linz/Danube, studied oboe and historical oboe instruments in the classes of Josef Blank, Katharina Arfken and Alfredo Bernardini in Linz, Basel and Amsterdam. He then went on to study music education in Karlsruhe while working. Johannes Knoll has been active as a musician throughout Europe since 2010. In 2021, he received funding from the German Music Council for the development of a music education game for children.

Remo Schnyder studied music at the Bern University of the Arts and the University of Music FHNW in Basel, where he subsequently taught saxophone and chamber music as an assistant to Marcus Weiss. He has won prizes at various competitions, including together with pianist Sayaka Sakurai at the Concours Léopold Bellan, Paris, at the Concours Nicati and from Migros-Kulturprozent. He has been a lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2019.

Esther Sévérac completed her master's degree in solo performance and pedagogy with harpist Sarah O'Brien at the Basel Academy of Music. In addition to an extensive classical repertoire for the concert harp, folk, popular and contemporary music make up part of her solo repertoire. She also experiments with harp and electronics to create new music for her instrument.

How the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra (SJSO) is losing "an exceptional musician, teacher and person. Kai Bumann has conducted the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra since 1998 and has not only created unforgettable moments of musical happiness over the years, but has also helped shape the lives of countless musicians."

The memorial service has already taken place in Kai Bumann's adopted home country of Poland. A public memorial event is planned for the fall. Details will be announced on the SJSO website in due course.

In the Biel/Bienne-Seeland-Jura bernois region, the Centre Albert Anker (Ins) and KartellCulturel (Biel and Nidau) are new additions to the list. KartellCulturel is a merger of the three cultural institutions Kultur Kreuz Nidau, Le Singe and Groovesound, the first of which was already on the list.

In the Bern-Mittelland region, the Reberhaus (Bolligen) and the Bern Chamber Orchestra (Bern) have been removed from the list. On the other hand, the Bären Buchsi (Münchenbuchsee), the Heitere Fahne (Bern and Köniz), the Berner Puppen Theater (Bern) and the Kulturfabrikbiglen (Biglen, Jaberg, Konolfingen, Landiswil, Muri bei Bern, Oberdiessbach and Oberthal) have been added.

The list was drawn up in a participatory process with the municipalities concerned. Service contracts for the years 2024 to 2027 are now being drawn up with the cultural institutions in these two regions.

How the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra (SJSO) is losing "an exceptional musician, teacher and person. Kai Bumann has conducted the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra since 1998 and has not only created unforgettable moments of musical happiness over the years, but has also helped shape the lives of countless musicians."

The memorial service has already taken place in Kai Bumann's adopted home country of Poland. A public memorial event is planned for the fall. Details will be announced on the SJSO website in due course.