In Switzerland, Tobias Jundt once successfully wrote songs for himself and other pop singers, as well as music for jazz bands, string quartets and orchestras. Nevertheless, he moved to Berlin in 2008 because in Switzerland you can only survive with mainstream pop music or in heavily subsidized genres such as jazz or classical music. However, he wanted to write songs in a niche area that were not played on mainstream radio and therefore demanded a "much larger playing field". He has succeeded in doing this from Berlin: he performs with his band Bonaparte even in faraway countries such as China, and his new album is even being released in the USA.

It is no coincidence that the fourth Bonaparte album is self-titled, as Tobias Jundt is looking for new artistic paths and a more independent expression. He has obviously realized that the hectic, garish party sound of the last few albums suits his wild shows, but otherwise wears out quickly. On Bonaparte his electro-pop still mostly sounds edgy, rough and excited. However, there are also quieter and more complex songs on it that you can also enjoy listening to at home.

This has a lot to do with the lyrics. Jundt rarely plays around with words, but rather muses more often, as in Me So Selfie, which addresses the compulsion to present oneself. Outstanding is the thoughtful Song Into The Wildfor which an impressive video clip can be found on the Bonaparte website. According to Jundt, there will be such a video clip for eight of the new songs, which comes very close to his aim of creating a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. The artistic reorientation is also evident live. At a concert in Zurich, Bonaparte focused less on the show and more on the music with a smaller line-up, which nevertheless went down well with the audience.

Bonaparte: 'Bonaparte', Warner Music. www.bonaparte.cc

Around 60 highly talented young music artists from America, Germany, Georgia, Israel, Romania, Russia, Taiwan, Urkaine and Switzerland will meet this year for the master classes at the Music Island Rheinau. Workshops are held in addition to individual lessons. The team of instructors under the direction of Youth Classics Founder Philip A. Draganov is made up of Jens-Peter Maintz, Igor Ozim, Nora Chastain, Jose G. Flores, Louise Hopkins, Tamara Kordzadze, Tim Kliphuis and Volker Jacobsen.

Concert series
The masterclasses include public concerts that prepare the young talents for examinations and competitions. This year's gala concert at the Tonhalle Zurich will take place on July 22. On July 20, a Sunday matinée with brunch will be held directly on the Rheinau Music Island and on July 18 and 19, two further concerts will be held in the Rathauslaube in Schaffhausen.

Last year, after much deliberation, the municipal council decided to close the Palace cinema in summer 2014 and subsequently consulted the users on the renovation. In particular, the visibility and acoustics in the auditorium are to be improved and the technology renewed.

The costs for the renovation are estimated at around CHF 5 million, with around half of this amount to be covered by contributions from the lottery fund and third parties. The renovation is scheduled for 2016.

The Spectacles français Foundation, which already organizes the guest performance season at the Palace, is to take over the operation and rental of the Palace. The Palace is to be rented out to event organizers and private individuals on attractive terms. The Palace Hall, with its 580 seats in the immediate vicinity of Biel/Bienne railroad station and in the middle of the language border, is of great importance for the region. It complements the municipal theater and completes the city's infrastructure for the performing arts.

The Demotape Clinic is the biggest competition for up-and-coming Swiss musicians. For the 16th edition, newcomers from all over Switzerland submitted 825 songs from the pop, rock, urban and electronic categories. A jury listened to all the songs and presented the best ones at the m4music festival on March 28 and 29. Industry professionals commented on the tracks publicly in front of the festival audience and gave the bands tips.

The most exciting demos, including the winners of the Fondation Suisa Awards, are brought together for the ninth time on a CD compilation. With Somnambulant Cannibal the deathcore band Conjonctive from Nyon won the main prize "Demo of the Year 2014".

The CD The Best of Demotape Clinic 2014 offers a unique insight into the work of up-and-coming Swiss pop music artists. The CD will be distributed to decision-makers in the Swiss music scene. At www.demotapeclinic.ch the compilation can be listened to as a stream and, while stocks last, ordered as a CD free of charge.

From 2016, the city is to spend CHF 20.83 million per year on the institutions jointly financed with the canton and regional municipalities in the area of the Presidential Directorate; the majority of this will go to Konzert Theater Bern. This amount includes an increase of around CHF 500,000 in total, spread across the eight institutions.

In future, CHF 6.27 million is to be spent on the eleven new institutions subsidized exclusively by the city; this includes a gross subsidy increase of CHF 316,000.

Finally, the credits for direct promotion (project contributions, cultural exchange, investment contributions and others) are to be significantly increased, namely by around CHF 670,000. This is not least in response to a long-standing request from the City Council to increase the proportion of direct funding in the total volume.

Overall, the planned increases amount to 4.7 percent; the premiums for multi-year contracts remain constant over the entire term.

The consultation on the four-year plan will last until the end of August 2014. The new service contracts should be submitted to the municipal council as early as December 2014. The corresponding credit decisions by the city council are planned for March 2015, the referendum on June 14, 2015.

More info: Consultation draft
 

The company is demanding that the cultural and audiovisual sectors be excluded from the negotiations. In Europe, culture is also a public good, the protection of which is mandated in Germany by the Basic Law, the state constitutions, the European treaties and, last but not least, a UNESCO convention.

The Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft is also opposed to the introduction of an investor-state dispute settlement procedure, including the possibility of recourse to private arbitration tribunals. Both the EU and the USA have some of the most highly developed judicial systems in the world.

The Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft is convinced that the fundamental importance and dimension of the social areas covered by the free trade agreement require maximum transparency with the substantial involvement of national politics and civil society. This means that the conduct of negotiations and voting on them should not only be in the hands of the EU. National parliaments should also have a say.

Gross tariff income amounted to CHF 47,557,035 (+8.35%) in 2013. The organization has 12,585 members and clients (+11.32%) and supported cultural and social projects worth CHF 4,388,982 in the reporting year. Administrative expenses amounted to 8.40 % (2012: 8.28 %). The organization had an average of 18.83 employees (previous year: 18.58) in 15.43 full-time positions (previous year: 15.55).

2,749,329 broadcast events (previous year 2,712,972) with 166,471 recordings in the audio sector (previous year 168,780) and 53,824 evaluated broadcast events (previous year 73,921) with 4,688 works in the audiovisual sector (previous year 4,730) were evaluated.

Substitute elections for various committees also took place at the delegates' meeting. Jörg Glauner (Warner Music) was elected to the Phonographic Producers specialist group, Rolf Simmen was elected to the Board of Trustees as a representative of the performers, and Peter Frei (previously), Marco Zanotta (previously) and Maurizio Dottore (new) were elected to the Board of Trustees of the Phonographic Producers Foundation.

Swissperform is the collecting society for ancillary copyrights (also known as related rights) in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein and is subject to state supervision. The society asserts the claims of holders of neighbouring rights against users arising from secondary uses of their performances. Its next Assembly of Delegates will take place on June 16, 2015 in Zurich.
 

According to the official press release, Steineggerr intends to continue the long-established company under the new name Krompholz Musik AG. The new location at Effingerstrasse 53 in Bern will offer acoustic and electronic keyboard and string instruments as well as sheet music from October 1, 2014.

The staff at the Krompholz piano workshop will continue to service and repair the instruments. However, the sale of string instruments will be discontinued in future.

The sale of the activities of Musikhaus Krompholz will lead to a special write-down of around one million francs on the inventory. The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

According to Suisa, the Swiss Cooperative Society of Authors and Publishers of Music, income from the exploitation of copyrights in Switzerland and abroad rose by 3% to CHF 135.7 million in 2013 (previous year: CHF 131.7 million). Total sales including ancillary revenues amounted to CHF 144.9 million in 2013, which corresponds to an increase of 2.7% compared to the previous year (CHF 141 million). With administrative expenses of CHF 26.9 million, the average cost deduction amounted to 12.47%.

The online growth shows that Suisa is also playing an increasingly important role for authors and publishers of music in this market, writes the cooperative. In addition to the existing agreements with market-leading providers such as Spotify, iTunes and YouTube, more will be added this year. Suisa agreed international licenses with online providers for the first time last year.
The Internet music services thus receive a direct license for use outside Switzerland.

However, income from the online business cannot compensate for the continuing decline in the production of sound recordings. According to Suisa, income from blank media royalties is lagging behind the market trend. Although this income did not decline for the first time in many years (4.1
million francs). Due to a pending decision by the Federal Administrative Court, no compensation for smartphones could be invoiced for private copying.

Suisa was able to record significantly higher income from the concert sector (performance rights) last year. In 2013, this area grew by 11% to CHF 47.2 million (previous year: CHF 42.5 million). However, broadcasting rights again accounted for the largest share of revenue in 2013 with income of CHF 60.8 million.

In place of Jean-Michel Valet, who is stepping down from the Board after seven years, the Annual General Meeting elected Christian Fighera, co-director of the Lausanne-based company Two Gentlemen, to the Board.

The following were honored Stomp is backa rhythmic, musical theater of the curative education school, Stiftung Schürmatt, Zetzwil, The secret of the seven pearlsa music project by the Dolenzelg Windisch elementary school, a Christmas musical by the Merenschwand upper school and a production of Bastien and Bastienne by the Alte Kantonsschule Aarau. There was also a prize for animated films from Untersiggenthal elementary school.

Every year, "outstanding art and cultural projects are honored as part of Funkenflug. Projects that have been realized with innovative artistic approaches and demonstrate what new approaches in cultural education make possible".

The winners will each receive prize money of CHF 5000. Further projects may be published by the jury as special practical examples. The prizes will be presented to the schools at a public awards ceremony.

More info:
https://www.ag.ch/de/bks/kultur/kulturvermittlung/kultur_macht_schule_1/funkenflug/funkenflug.jsp

The Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation has awarded prizes to the composer Rebecca Saunders (prize money 10,000 euros) and the music critic Gerhard Rohde (prize money 8,000 euros). The philosopher Christian Grüny received a sponsorship award (4000 euros).

A student of Wolfgang Rihm and Nigel Osborne, she now teaches as a professor at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media and has been a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts since 2009. Gerhard Rohde is co-editor of the Neue Musikzeitung and works as a freelancer for the FAZ. He was awarded the Happy New Ears Prize for Journalism for his decades of critical reporting in the field of New Music.

The Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation, founded by composer and conductor Hans Zender in 2004, has been awarding a prize in the fields of composition and journalism every two years since 2011.

Around 350 surviving, lost, unfinished and fragmentary works are listed in this volume of over 1300 pages, edited by Heribert Henrich. In addition to the presentation of musical sources, the work entries also include first publications of Zimmermann's letters, notes and calendar entries with all relevant passages for the respective work.The catalog raisonné also contains 23 color illustrations of autographs. It is part of the scholarly cataloging of the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Archive of the Akademie der Künste Berlin and is based on preliminary work by the late Zimmermann researcher Klaus Ebbeke.

From the foreword: "In hardly any other epoch did an avant-garde (...) appear on the scene that broke so vehemently with the past and strove for radical innovations in tonal language and compositional technique. The representatives of this musical upheaval went to great lengths to explain and justify their own actions, especially as the attacks to which they initially found themselves exposed were overwhelmingly massive and vehement. At the same time, there was also a pronounced sense of competition within this group of innovators, for example when it came to claims to priority. In this way, a form of speaking and writing about composed music emerged that was determined to no small extent by tactical considerations. However, this discourse (...) pushed itself very strongly in front of the musical phenomenon itself (...)"

Heribert Henrich, Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Bernd Alois Zimmermann und ihrer Quellen, collaboration by Klaus Ebbeke, 1326 p., linen, € 199.00, Bulkhead, Mainz 2014, ISBN 978-3-7957-0688-3
 

How the Saarbrücker Zeitung the university will have to cut its budget by around a fifth. Subjects such as law, business studies, dentistry and mechatronics were initially under consideration. Now, after fierce protests from those potentially affected, the humanities in particular are to be cut.

For example, the university management is proposing to have Protestant and Catholic theology financed by the churches and to outsource not only musicology but also art studies, the latter to the Saar University of Fine Arts (HBK). Sociology and Slavic studies are already being phased out.

According to the newspaper, there is surprisingly little resistance to the projects. The Saarland Business Association welcomes the plans, while the Saarland Society for Cultural Policy remains silent.

As part of a pilot project with the Department of Education and Sport (Office for School Culture), fifth-grade pupils at the Langmatt school in Zurich-Witikon were given the opportunity to get to grips with all the artistic and operational aspects of the ZKO, both in front of and behind the scenes, over the course of a school year.

The teaching material developed by the ZKO especially for this project and the involvement of a music teacher ensured a lively exchange between pupils, orchestra and office staff right from the start.

The school class was given an in-depth insight into the orchestra's work phases, processes, projects and programs. Musicians from the ZKO visited the class at school and talked about their work as orchestra musicians. They welcomed the pupils to concerts in the Tonhalle and allowed them to reflect on their concert experiences in essays, discussions and drawings. During guided tours of the ZKO building, the school class also gained an insight into the rehearsals and the operational structure of the orchestra.

Under the name "Young ZKO", the class soon grew into a separate business unit within the ZKO organization and published their newly gained impressions and insights on the orchestra's own website. At public dress rehearsals, the pupils were responsible for welcoming and entertaining the audience, and later the moderation and conducting interviews with artists were also entirely in the hands of the schoolchildren.

On June 20, 2014, there will be an opportunity to experience the Zurich Chamber Orchestra's "Junge ZKO" live as the crowning finale to their school project: Under the title "Klangzauber & Fussballfieber", the ZKO will play movie and country anthems under the artistic direction of the "Young ZKO". Following the concert, the match between Switzerland and France will be broadcast on a big screen in the ZKO House.

"Music and politics - a mutual responsibility" is the theme of the 4th European Music Forum (the Schweizer Musikzeitung has reported). As announced by the Swiss Music Council, Croatian President Ivo Josipović, who holds a doctorate in law and is a composer, will be discussing this topic in greater depth at the Yehudi Menuhin Forum on Friday, June 20 at 10 am.

Other speakers include Karel Bartak, Head of the "Creative Europe" cultural program at the European Commission, Enrique Barón Crespo, President of the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation and former President of the European Parliament, as well as Christine Egerszegi, member of the Council of States, and Christa Markwalder, member of the National Council.

Detailed program and registration: www.musikrat.ch/european-forum-on-music