Integration is easiest for new arrivals from abroad if they get involved in an association. You get to know people, do things together and can distinguish yourself as a hands-on, i.e. socially useful person. Switzerland is a country of associations. But this was apparently not always the case, as a 100-year-old article from the magazine Modern folk music shows. In it, the Swiss are described as a nation of lone wolves who are completely unsuited to the club system.

The article reflects the resentment that the author obviously harbored after a 10-year odyssey. After the first initiatives, it took that long for the Swiss Mandolinists' and Guitarists' Association to be launched on November 13, 1921. Immigrants also played a key role in the eventual happy outcome, as SP city councillor-to-be Simone Brander explained in her Sunday speech on the 100th anniversary of the association, which has since been renamed the Swiss Mandolinists' and Guitarists' Association. Swiss Plucked Music Association underlined the renamed association. This was no coincidence. As Vreni Wenger-Christen's commemorative publication beautifully explains, plucked string ensembles and orchestras in Switzerland originated from outside. Immigrants from Italy brought sociable music-making on plucked instruments over the Gotthard from the south, while the Wandervogel movement radiated to us from the north. What both influences had in common was that they appealed to broad sections of the population who were excluded from conservatories and bourgeois musical life.

These origins can still be felt today. For example, the Amando Zurich Mandolin Orchestra, one of the ensembles that provided the musical backdrop to the ceremony on Sunday morning, was founded in 1910 as the Trämler Orchestra. They were and still are amateurs who achieve amazing things with dedication and under professional direction. What has changed since then is the breadth of the movement, mentioned association president Sandra Tinner in her entertaining speech. While 22 associations joined forces when the association was founded, it now consists of seven orchestras and 30 individual members. The festival was above all a family reunion. People knew each other and exchanged memories and anecdotes.

But don't think that the association is mainly looking backwards. On Saturday, a not inconsiderable part of the musical festival program was played by young people. Plucked string orchestras and ensembles from the Zurich, Baar, Stans, Horgen, Basel and Uster-Greifensee music schools showed that enthusiastic young musicians are on the rise. And with the zupf.helvetica association orchestra, founded in 2017 and led by Sonja Wiedemer and Christian Wernicke, there is an ensemble ready to take on this new generation and offer them a perspective.

pluck.helvetica wants to represent Swiss plucked string music nationally and internationally and is focusing on the strategy of expanding its repertoire through commissions. While the 2019 commission for the first such project with Anina Keller went to a specialist in the genre, Ramon Bischoff comes from a completely different musical corner for this year's project. The musician, who works as a sound engineer, often experiments with alternative tuning systems and also writes a lot of electro-acoustic music. The sound world of the plucked string orchestra was new territory for him. The result of the collaboration, the piece Schwärme, which was premiered on Sunday, was therefore an adventure for both sides.

In his composition, Bischoff works with sound effects that may be unfamiliar to many, yet he has listened carefully and used the body of sound effectively and adequately. The title alludes to the flocking behavior of birds or fish, which seem to move chaotically and yet suddenly act in a very coordinated manner and change direction in a targeted manner. The tremolo, the mandolin cliché par excellence, is used appropriately for the chaotic confusion, while clear rhythms organize the movement in between. Slightly different tunings meet tempered tuning and create beats, which in turn mix with tapping and scratching noises. The result is an interesting soundscape that elicits unusual sounds from the instruments. Only the addition of the double bass indicates that a pure plucked string orchestra does have some tonal limitations.

Percussionist Ziegler completed his studies at the Zurich University of the Arts in September 2019 with a Master of Arts in Music (Performance Soloist). In 2017, he won the Migros Culture Percentage Study Award for the second time since 2015 for his exceptional solo performance during the Instrumental Music Competition. In 2018 and 2020 he won the Kiefer-Hablitzel / Göhner Music Prize and was a semi-finalist at the International TROMP Percussion Competition in both years.

The Thurgau expert jury has selected the following six Thurgau artists from 50 applications: Hannes Brunner, visual artist, Zurich; Lea Frei, author and illustrator, St. Gallen; Michael Frei, filmmaker, Zurich; Sonja Lippuner, visual artist, Basel; Thi My Lien Nguyen, visual artist, Winterthur; Fabian Ziegler, musician, Matzingen.

Sébastian Jacot from Geneva studied at the Geneva School of Music. He won 1st prize at the Swiss Youth Music Competition in 2002 and 2004. In 2005, he was named Soloist of the Year by the Jmanuel and Evamaria Schenk Foundation. In 2015, he also won the International ARD Music Competition in Munich.

Prior to his engagement in Leipzig, he had already worked in the same capacity for the Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva, the Saito Kinen Festival Orchetsra in Japan and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

The San Francisco Symphony is considered one of the most important orchestras in the USA. It has been conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen since 2020.

Original article:
https://slippedisc.com/2022/04/san-francisco-swoops-for-leipzigs-principal-flute/

Constantin Regamey, born in Kiev in 1907, wrote the Chansons persanes for baritone and chamber orchestra based on texts by Omar Khayyám in Warsaw. After the closure of the university there, where he had taught Sanskrit, he joined the resistance in 1940. In 1944, he managed to escape from German deportation to Switzerland, where he soon made a career as a linguist and music journalist. He died in Lausanne on December 27, 1982. (Source: MGG).

The concert under the motto " L'Orient : une fascination de longue durée " will feature Regamey's Chansons persanes Robert Schumanns Pictures from the East op. 66 for piano four hands and the 4th Symphony by Johannes Brahms in the version for two pianos from 1887.

Link to the program

Jerzy Stankiewicz: Constantin Regamey et la genèse de sa personnalité
Article in the Swiss Music Newspaper 7_8_2007, S. 6 (PDF)

Jerzy Stankiewicz : Le destin tragique du père de Constantin Regamey
Online article of the Swiss Music Newspaper from June 1, 2017

How can education for sustainable development and music be brought together? To investigate this question, Samuel Marti carried out a project week on "BioSounds" as part of his master's thesis. The aim of the master's thesis was to design, test and evaluate a learning environment. In this environment, the students were able to experience phenomena and processes from the environment through sound, record them with iPads and finally process them into a sound collage during the course of the project week.

Würenlingen School was one of five schools to be awarded a prize for this cultural project in the "Funkenflug" competition. The competition is held every year by the Aargau Department of Education's specialist unit for cultural education.

More info: https://www.lernumgebungen.ch/

According to a press release from the canton of Valais, it paid out over CHF 10.2 million to cultural enterprises and actors in 2021. A total of CHF 6.9 million, divided equally between the Confederation and the canton, was awarded as part of the first support package under the Covid-19 Cultural Ordinance. In particular, this amount has made it possible to pay compensation and finance transformation projects.

A further CHF 3.3 million will be added for specific cantonal measures such as support for choir and music ensemble directors, a lump-sum compensation for cultural actors and compensation for the 20 percent not covered by the Covid-19 Cultural Ordinance.

More info:
https://www.vs.ch/de/web/communication/detail?groupId=529400&articleId=15933184

Stefan Wirth's first opera was actually due to be staged two years ago, but the outbreak of the pandemic prevented the premiere planned for May 2020. A lot has happened since then. Corona has brought the music business to a temporary standstill. The war in Ukraine is shaking Europe to its foundations. In these times of crisis, people may not necessarily expect art to be relevant to society, but they do expect it to be relevant. The new, three-act opera Girl with a Pearl Earringwhich has made it to the main stage of the Zurich Opera House, seems a little out of date in 2022. The undramatic material, which is based on Tracy Chevalier's 1999 novel of the same name - inspired by Jan Vermeer's well-known portrait Girl with the pearl earring (1665) - is told with little tension (English libretto: Philip Littell). Even the oppressive atmosphere and the problematic power relations in the Vermeer household, which can be experienced in Peter Webber's film adaptation of the material, for example, can hardly be felt in Stefan Wirth's musical realization, so that the two-hour evening becomes too lengthy in the long run. And moves in circles like Andrew Lieberman's revolving stage.

Tracy Chevalier has given the girl portrayed a story and a name. Griet arrives as a maid in the stately home, which is dominated by Vermeer's mother-in-law and landlady Maria Thins. Catharina Vermeer is pregnant, in a bad mood and jealous of the young woman. Griet helps the reclusive painter, who is under pressure to succeed, to mix colors and ends up posing for the painting in which she wears Vermeer's wife's pearl earrings. The author tells the story entirely from Griet's point of view. And the composer adopts this perspective. The young American soprano Lauren Snouffer is on stage almost continuously. With her crystal-clear, agile, high-pitched soprano, this Griet is a sympathetic figure from the very beginning. She fills the cantilenas that Wirth has written for her with warmth.

Melos is found almost exclusively in the vocal parts. Stefan Wirth uses a large symphony orchestra without electronics, which he enriches with a variety of percussion, two harps, piano, harpsichord and celesta. There is also plenty of room for sounds, such as the crackling of paper, Griet sharpening her knife at the beginning, the strings playing with the wood of the bow or the sibilants in the wind instruments. It is also the orchestra in which the continuous narrative flow begins, which knows no pauses. Similar to Alban Berg's music of transformation, the orchestral interludes link the scenes together, even if Wirth's music only rarely develops similar plasticity. Instrumental effects such as double basses attacking in the lower register are repeated. Wirth's small-scale, complex, sometimes polyrhythmically constructed music is set with clean craftsmanship and takes the comprehensibility of the text into consideration. Here you can sense the theater musician who has already worked with Frank Castorf and Christoph Marthaler. But Wirth's flat sounds remain mostly unapproachable. It lacks a pulse, it also lacks tonal refinement and exciting color mixtures. It is certainly not the fault of the Philharmonia Zurich and the clearly structured conductor Peter Rundel that there is no real pull in the orchestra pit on this highly applauded premiere evening.

Ted Huffman's spartan, generally unimaginative staging also does little to help the music. Colorful historicity can only be experienced in Annemarie Woods' costumes. Otherwise, the mostly empty stage is dominated by a cool black and white aesthetic in which the story is told conventionally. The director freezes some scenes into still images, so that the stage itself becomes a painting for a moment. Scenic escalations such as the attempted rape by the patron Van Ruijven (Iain Milne) hardly create any tension. You can always guess what is coming. Thomas Hampson also fails to develop a clear profile as Jan Vermeer in this constantly revolving setting with his lyrical baritone. Vermeer's relationship with his wife Catharina (present: Laura Aikin) is equally lacking in contours. And Liliana Nikiteanu as Maria Thins also remains colorless. In the role of Tanneke, Irène Friedli is a smart housemaid with a clear voice, Yannick Debus plays Griet's butcher friend Pieter with the necessary simplicity, Lisa Tatin sings the nagging children with a crystalline, coloratura-sure soprano. At the end, Griet is left alone with the pearl earrings, which she wants to sell. They have not brought her any luck. And even after two hours, we still don't know exactly who this young woman is.

"Big names from the international saxophone scene and up-and-coming talent present a broad spectrum: classical, contemporary and improvised music." If you want to find out more about the festival on the Zurich Saxfest website, you won't exactly be inundated with information. But after a moment's thought, you have to admit that this sentence actually says it all. The Saxfest was only held for the second time after 2017 due to corona. It was organized by saxophonist, conductor and cultural manager Lars Mlekusch, who teaches at the Zurich University of the Arts. And it did exactly what was briefly and succinctly announced. Concerts in a wide variety of styles, spread across various locations in Zurich, from the Toni-Areal and the Mehrspurclub to the Fraumünster and the Johanneskirche to the Labor5 party venue and the Kulturmarkt. Kenneth Tse, Christoph Grab, David Brutti and the Amstad Inglin duo are just a few of the names that give an idea of the wide range of music on offer.

Mlekusch organized the Saxfest together with the Zurich Saxophone Collectivean ensemble consisting of his students. This provided the members with priceless experiences: as organizers, performers, visitors to high-level concerts and master classes. The latter in particular provided fascinating insights, as a short visit to Frank Gratkowski showed.

The German, who also performed a solo improvisation on Thursday evening, is described on Wikipedia as a jazz saxophonist, clarinettist and composer, but can only be pigeonholed as such with a great deal of willingness to simplify. He could rather be described as a daring improviser without a net or a false bottom, for whom genre boundaries mean nothing. It was enlightening to hear Gratkowski talk about his unusual career and his constant search for something new. But what stuck with me most was his undoctrinaire attitude to his instrument. He described it as a megaphone, a toy that he was constantly testing out for its functions and possibilities. It is probably this play instinct, together with his consistent work on self-imposed challenges, that enables him to rarely repeat himself. For the classically trained students, the lessons were a challenge. Improvisation needs to be learned just as much as playing exactly to the notes, but according to Gratkowski it is also important for classical performers. In his experience, interpreters of new music in particular would also play the written music better if they had at least some experience as improvisers.

The members of the Zurich Saxophone Collective had several opportunities to present themselves as performers. The ensemble played the streamed opening concert on Saturday evening with pieces by Bartók, Francisco Guerrero Marín and Mahler, impressively demonstrating the level at which it is capable of playing. Bartók's Divertimento and Mahler's 4th Symphony were arrangements by Miha Ferk, who congenially rewrote the works, the saxophones merely supplemented by accordion, piano, harp, double bass and percussion. However, despite the brilliance of the result, the limits of the concept were also revealed here. For outsiders, i.e. non-saxophone aficionados, the benefits of such an arrangement are only partially apparent. Mahler's Fourth in particular loses some of its complexity through the reworking.

Another concert, however, demonstrated the extent to which arrangements or "repurposing" can also be enriching. In the small Johanneskirche near Limmatplatz, Sunday evening was dedicated to the "lyrical saxophone". While Webern's Quartet Op. 22 for violin, clarinet, saxophone and piano is perhaps not the epitome of lyrical melodies, students then played songs by Schubert, Strauss and Mahler. A nice alternative to singing, in which the saxophone perhaps dominated the piano a little at times. After the break, saxophonist Harry White and pianist Hans Adolfsen delivered a small but very fine concert with a few surprises. Vocal pieces by Roussel, Messiaen and Nielsen provided Harry White with the perfect stage to let the saxophone sing. In the following three very short pieces for saxophone solo by Daniel Fueter, White revealed with virtuosity just how complexly compressed these "little pieces" are. The finale then offered a real expansion of the repertoire. Erwin Schulhoff's Esquisses de Jazz for piano in the arrangement by Edward Rushton and Hans Adolfsen seemed like a genuine saxophone piece. May these little trouvailles establish themselves!

The successor to the long-standing President of the European Youth Choir Festival Basel, National Councillor Elisabeth Schneider-Schneiter, has been decided: Maya Graf, member of the Basel Council of States, was unanimously elected as the new President at an extraordinary general meeting of the European Youth Choir Festival Basel association.

The European Youth Choir Festival Basel is one of the world's most important meeting places for highly qualified children's and youth choirs. Every two years in May, eighteen children's and youth choirs selected by a jury perform for an audience of more than 30,000 listeners over the days of Ascension.

In addition to concerts, sing-alongs and educational events, the festival places a special focus on intercultural encounters. For example, over 500 children and young people from eleven European countries will be accommodated in host families in the Basel region. The 13th European Youth Choir Festival Basel will take place from Wednesday, May 17 to Sunday, May 21, 2023.

According to the HMTM press release, the Open Music Academy combines the idea of Open Educational Resources, which has had an influence on the development of German and international higher education, with comprehensive music education. The OER platform thus meets current requirements in learning and teaching and promotes new forms of collaboration and innovation in music education. At the same time, it offers space for impulses and discourse on a wide range of topics from the entire world of music.

Interested parties will find support for arranging music, educational material for teaching music in school classes, learning aids for practicing or for working with audio and video technology as well as other tools for preparing learning materials (for example a PDF viewer, soon an interactive video player, multi-track audio player and much more). Potentially, materials of all kinds can be added, such as interviews, lectures, music examples and more.

Link: https://openmusic.academy/

While m4music, the pop music festival organized by Migros Culture Percentage, fell victim to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the event, including its demo tape clinic and various panels, went digital the following year. "That worked surprisingly well," recalls Festival Director Philipp Schnyder von Wartensee. Nevertheless, he is relieved that m4music was able to take place live and on site in Zurich again this March.

Unlike in previous years, the festival was not opened in Lausanne. "Instead, we will be holding an event at Couleur 3 in May with artists such as Evelinn Trouble and Giulia Dabalà," explains Schnyder in an interview after the festival. It is also a clear indication that the festival wants to increase its presence during the year in future - including in French-speaking Switzerland. The pandemic has also prompted the m4music organizers to think about the festival in general. "We decided to stick with m4music as a place of consolidation. However, the coronavirus has given us a digital boost. Among other things, this has led us to say goodbye to various printed materials."

In any case, m4music has set itself the goal of becoming more sustainable. "This year we became a vegetarian festival. We also asked ourselves whether we wanted to continue flying people in for our program and the conference. Our answer: only in an emergency." According to the festival director, topics such as the climate and racism have become more urgent in the last two years. "We want to incorporate this into the conference." Consequently, "cultural appropriation and music" and "green touring" were also discussed at this year's festival.

A total of around 4,000 music fans and 1,300 professionals took part in m4music on March 25 and 26. "The number of professionals was even higher than in the pre-corona years. We see this as proof of how great the need was in the music scene to be able to meet physically again," emphasizes Schnyder. Another new topic at m4music was jazz. "We had already planned to focus on young jazz in particular in 2020. But due to the pandemic, the whole thing had to wait." This year's program included a panel entitled "New jazz - a breath of fresh air and no limits". This brought together the director of the Willisau Jazz Festival, Arno Troxler, the founder of the Hamburg Elbjazz Festival, Tina Heine, and musician Benedikt Wieland, who is responsible for international affairs and social security at Sonart - Musicians Switzerland.

Presenter Stefan Künzli's thesis was that young musicians such as Jordan Rakei, Jorja Smith and Loyle Carner are increasingly dissolving the genre boundaries of jazz by mixing it with hip-hop, soul, indie or electronic music. While Troxler insisted that jazz has always known how to present itself in an extremely diverse way and is by no means just for older men, Wieland emphasized that it was high time to stop throwing around terms. "Such things must be overcome with music." Heine, Director of the Salzburg Jazz & The City festival since 2016, focused on visitors aged between 15 and 80: "They are welcome to find the music at our festival 'grotty' from time to time." Her primary concern is that people get up from their sofa at home and come together at concerts.

Meanwhile, a panel presented by Suisa wanted to find out how music streaming changes the pop song, especially on a portal like Spotify, where 65,000 songs are uploaded every day and it is therefore essential to give your songs a unique selling point - otherwise they risk getting lost in the crowd. "My rule is that there has to be something new in my songs every eight seconds," said songwriter and producer Loris Cimino. At the same time, he emphasized: "The quality of the craft has to be right."

Singer/songwriter Evelinn Trouble believes that songwriting on Spotify "is not crucial: a good song is still a good song." However, she has started to write increasingly shorter songs. Henrik Amschler, alias HSA, said that his aim was for something to happen as quickly as possible in his songs. Meanwhile, Julie Born, Managing Director of Sony Music Switzerland, emphasized the increasing relevance of playlists on Spotify. To summarize, the following still seems to apply: There is no single path to success - however, the paths that are supposed to lead to career success seem to be increasingly convoluted.
The panel "How Streaming Is Changing Songwriting" can be followed under the following link: www.m4music.ch/conference

Awards

The main prize "Demo of the Year" 2022 went to Soukey from Bern. It also received one of the four Fondation Suisa Awards. The other three went to Goffbaby, David Caspar and Glaascats.

The production of the song Driver by Joya Marleen by the directing duo Bastien Bron and Laetitia Gauchat ("Das Playground", Neuchâtel) was awarded the "Best Video Clip 2022" (jury and audience award for the first time!).

The next m4music-Festival will take place on March 24 and 25, 2023 in Zurich.

One week after the coronavirus measures were lifted, the cultural sector is still facing major challenges, writes the Culture Taskforce. However, it would like to thank the public, who "have demonstrated the indispensability of culture in our society through their loyalty".

This "Thank You Day" expresses the appreciation of the cultural sector towards all partners. In addition to the public, thanks are also expressed to those who have remained culturally active during the crisis for the financial support measures and the "lively and constructive exchange between the authorities and cultural associations". So far, it has been possible to prevent a cultural clear-cutting.

With the slogan "Culture is our profession, welcome back", the campaign is also an appeal to the public: "Culture is open, come and see us!"
 

Built by composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Rachmaninov in the 1930s and located directly on Lake Lucerne, Villa Senar (an abbreviation of the names Sergei, his wife Natalia and Rachmaninov) and other buildings in the 20,000 square meter park have been listed buildings since 2018.

With the purchase, the canton of Lucerne is resolving the difficult inheritance situation and enabling the inheritance to be divided. The legal heirs of French nationality (four great-grandchildren of Serge Rachmaninoff) will each receive two million francs. The Cantonal Council approved the corresponding special loan on December 6, 2021. The Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation waives a share of the purchase price in order to help secure and renovate the villa by transferring it to cantonal ownership.

More info:
https://www.lu.ch/verwaltung/BKD/bkd_dienststellen/bkd_hochschulbildung/villa_senar

According to the family's obituary, the musician, who was born in 1924, was a "highly talented, recognized musician". He graduated from the Zurich Conservatory in 1943 and played in the Gstaad Music Festival Orchestra under Hermann Scherchen and later in the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Ernest Ansermet. He was principal oboist in the Swiss Festival Orchestra Lucerne for many years and in the Winterthur City Orchestra from 1944 to 1989. He also pursued an international career as a soloist and worked as a teacher in Winterthur. In 1989 he was awarded the Cultural Prize of the City of Winterthur.

Following the renewed funding approval from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the years 2022 to 2025, the project "Indexing, digitization and online presentation of the Historical Archive of Musikverlag Schott", which has been funded by the DFG since 2017, can be continued. The aim is to catalog the business correspondence from the business archive, the production archive with music manuscripts and printed music as well as the complete cataloging of the old Schott archive, which mainly contains unpublished musical works.

The digitization of music manuscripts and printed music from the production archive is being continued. The extensive contents of the Schott archive and their complex structure are thus digitally visible, searchable and scientifically analyzable in the international online union catalog for historical music manuscripts and printed music (RISM), the online catalog of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek as well as in the Schott-Archiv portal.

Link: https://schottarchiv-digital.de