Fit in 15 minutes is a collection by the well-known flute teachers Elisabeth Weinzierl and Edmund Wächter. They have put together a kind of training program for all abilities with basic exercises for various technical playing requirements. Learners, amateurs and professionals can put together their own personal sequence from the areas of tone, articulation and finger technique. The author advises: "Two to three exercises from each chapter can be selected and combined for the warm-up program. All exercises are models that can and should be varied." At the beginning of the volume, Weinzierl and Wächter also recommend improvising in the chosen key, as was customary in the Baroque period, and add an example from the 19th century by Giuseppe Gariboldi.

The tonal exercises are divided into two practice plans in the fourth space and in the fifth space within a tonal range up to the three-note B, with the highest and lowest passages for which a B foot is required in brackets. For "good sound and breath control", the palette ranges from long sustained "sun tones" to sound waves that prepare the vibrato, chromatic ties with crescendo to exercises with singing and playing that strengthen the throat resonance. A special training is "flute beat boxing", in which "speaking tools" are transferred to the flute and also used improvisationally. Other aspects of tone formation such as harmonics, large intervals, bendings and glissandi are also integrated into the exercises; colors and character in the tone are developed using examples from the literature and transposed into the upper registers. Articulation in the lower register is built up through diaphragmatic staccato and slurs in the lower register. The wide range of finger exercises also includes combinations of passages from scales and sequences of thirds, with particular attention given to the seventh chords, which are circled with a wide range of slaloms.

Even if some of the suggested practice methods are reminiscent of further developed tone and finger exercises, e.g. by Marcel Moyse, Paul Taffanael and Peter-Lukas Graf, or of tone exercises with contemporary playing methods, such as those already recommended by Robert Dick or Stefan Keller, among others, in their works Fit in 15 minutes is a very successful compendium due to its imaginative and variable arrangement of exercises, which helps to organize the playing time as variedly and efficiently as possible.

Elisabeth Weinzierl and Edmund Wächter: Fit in 15 minutes, warm-ups and basic exercises for flute, ED 22745, € 18.50, Schott, Mainz

Founded in 1986 by the two Swiss composers Thomas Kessler and Gérard Zinsstag on their own initiative, continued by various successors and finally taken over by the city government's culture department, the "Tage für Neue Musik" was a festival focused on international contemporary avant-garde music. After local officials had taken over responsibility for the financing, public relations and organization of the festival since 2012, but the curators they appointed changed every year, the festival eventually ran out of ideas. In 2018, the mayor also threatened to turn off the financial tap.

However, when the trained music teacher Diana Lehnert became the city's head of serious music in 2019, she decided to reorganize the festival. However, this should - understandably - involve a repositioning in terms of content and form. The city promised a considerable sum of around one million francs for the three-year trial run. In addition, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, which is well-funded by the state, promised its annual free contribution in the form of its own concert. The package would also include the concert hall, which would otherwise be exorbitantly expensive for third parties. It was also decided that the city would relinquish its sponsorship, reports Lehnert. With the task of finding a future director, it appointed Björn Gottstein, the previous artistic director of the Donaueschingen Music Days and, since this year, secretary of the board of trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in Munich, in consultation with the cultural directorate, the performer and lecturer at the Bern University of the Arts, Cathy van Eck, the oboist and music mediator Catherine Milliken and the double bass player and director of "Sonic Space Basel" at the Basel University of Music, Uli Fussenegger - heavyweight practitioners and advocates of experimental creation.

As a worldwide blueprint and reservoir for all kinds of performative sound art, the Berlin Festival MaerzMusik can be described as such. The "Festival for Time Issues" thus proclaims with corresponding self-confidence on its website that it sees itself as a place for artistic experiences, encounters and joint reflection on how we deal with time. And further: Developed from the perspective of listening and supported by contemporary music, the festival opens up a space in which life, art and theory can converge with concerts, performances, installations, film presentations and discourse formats.

After a two-stage application round, a collective consisting of Zurich composer Katharina Rosenberger, Valais choreographer Julie Beauvais and Berlin ensemble manager Lisa Nolte was finally entrusted with the organization of the new festival in Zurich. Under the name "Sonic Matter"The award was given to a concept that aims to unite a whole range of different undertakings. On the one hand, it wants to create a platform for cross-disciplinary experiments, on the other hand it wants to open itself up artistically to interdisciplinarity and commit itself to diversity in gender orientation and sustainability in curating. The new management also wants to present its international offerings not only on the extended festival weekend, but also via a supervised web stream throughout the year in order to stay in contact with the audience on the one hand and to offer space for acute contemporary issues on the other. There are also plans to invite a different festival with exponents and examples each year in order to listen beyond its own borders. In 2021 it was the "Novas Frequências" from Rio de Janeiro.

In a potpourri of events, various instrumental, music-theatrical, performative, installative, multimedia and participatory productions were performed on the first weekend in December. The program focused on North and South American productions. An audio and video lounge, which was always open, offered the opportunity to listen to Brazilian electro-acoustic works that were performed at the guest festival Novas Frequências.

The theme of the first festival edition was "Turn". As in Berlin, where the festival organizers explicitly point out on their program pages whether a performance is composed, improvised music or even something completely different, the Sonic Matter organizers refer to who a performance is suitable for on their program sheet in the concert entries, such as "for people aged five and over who are good on their feet" or "people with impaired hearing". Before the actual opening concert, the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art hosted the concert installation "recommended for people aged ten and over". White Line with Zurich-based electric guitarist Samuel Toro Pérez. On three screens, flickering video images of a hand feeding a cigarette to a mouth by US artist Marina Rosenfeld could be seen. White lines appeared over and over again. The sequences also served as a score for the guitarist, who went through a lengthy exercise in noise music. This was followed by a performance in the storerooms of an off-gallery with the improvising French violist Franz Loriot, who virtuously beat "critical listeners" around the ears with never-ending cascades of harmonics.

In the amphitheater-style Schiffbau Box of the Schauspielhaus, the following music was performed under the title Connectivity an exciting opening concert for "all those who like to sit, watch and listen for 90 minutes". The members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) from New York and Chicago impressively demonstrated that improvisation can meet the very highest musical standards and that there no longer has to be an artistic antithesis between composing and improvising. When John Cage and his American comrades-in-arms confronted the European music avant-garde over 70 years ago, the gulf seemed insurmountable until recently. The ideologies of mastering time through strict organization or focusing on the intrinsic time of sounds were irreconcilable. The pieces played with the utmost mastery Thistledow for piano trio and percussion and the situational Creative Construction SetTM for open form and instrumentation by the legendary improvisation grandmaster George E. Lewis and Nicole Mitchell's Cult of Electromagnetic Connectivity for flute, clarinet, percussion, violin and cello proved the opposite. The pit is a thing of the past, as long as the musicians here are able to promote something completely new in terms of form and content. This also included the performance of the multimedia and multi-part I See You by the Spanish composer Helga Arias, born in 1984. A string quartet with video projections, a highly musical piece. The Furrer student was ICE's Composer in Residence 2021, but was never able to be on site to work out details with the musicians during the development of her commissioned work due to the pandemic. She is currently in the process of writing up her experiences of communicating at a distance in a dissertation entitled Composing the politics of musical creation: a proposal for alternative working interactions for the Anton Bruckner University in Linz. The trained music teacher and composer currently lives in Samedan, where she teaches at the Academia Engiadina.

By contrast, the performance Ear Action by Berlin composers Neo Hülcker and Stellan Veloce may have been too under-complex even for five-year-olds, as recommended. The performers were the musicians Philip Bartels, Simone Keller, Moritz Mühlenbach and Lara Stanic. The audience had to sit in a row in a darkened hall facing a wall. As soon as everyone was fitted with hearing protection, the performers began to rub various objects such as a violin bow against it - analog musique concrète with the means of arte povera, so to speak.

Afterwards, the Tonhalle Orchestra, conducted by Pierre-André Valade, kept its promise in the main hall. His extra concert began with the work written for large orchestra and premiered in Lucerne in 2010. TURN for orchestra of the currently omnipresent Dieter Ammannwhich lent its name to the first edition of the festival. "Turn" means turning point and refers to the contrast and change of perspective that takes place after around two thirds of the piece. After many Boulez-style arpeggios and chords and with a steady basic impulse, the piece unexpectedly almost comes to a standstill. The rhythm is suddenly restrained, so that TURN threatens to disintegrate into disparate parts. Sarah Nemtsov, who was born in Germany in 1980 and is the author of the equally large-scale dropped.drowned from 2017, is currently being played everywhere. Everything is "well done": large-scale textures develop from the non-soloistic, prepared piano and an amplified harp, which is also prepared. This is then mirrored by the strings and percussion, followed by wind instruments. Eclair by French composer Eric Montalbetti was performed at the suggestion of his compatriot, the conductor in Zurich. Montalbetti was primarily active as artistic director of the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France for 18 years until 2014, before venturing into the public eye with his compositions. He, too, relies on large-scale textures, but unlike Nemtsov, they almost never get off the ground and do nothing more than bore the listener dramaturgically.

The installation Under the Klopstock meadow demanded unshakeable perseverance. According to the program, it would be suitable for anyone who enjoys exploring underground spaces. As poetically named as the park above the cavern is, the diesel plant below it, which has long since been demolished, is all the more banal. The remaining empty space was simply amplified tel quel and the result was an installation declared to be a sound trail. The fact that Zurich-based Kaspar König had the guts to lure festival visitors there in the first place is more of a brazen piece than a sad one. For "people aged five and over who are good on their feet, including those with impaired hearing", there was a short excursion to experience the acoustically polluted Limmat Valley. According to Zurich sound artist Andres Bosshard, this works best on the valley slopes and along the river.

The following day, the twelve-piece Madness Ensemble, based in Zurich, improvised freely for "everyone with 150 minutes of sitting, fumbling and standing". It organized a so-called workout jazz marathon on the stage of the Kunstraum Walcheturm. The "indeterminate meta-composition" developed along the level range of a jet taking off at just under 100 dB, whereby most listeners were hardly given a real chance to perceive the clash of new music and improvisation, of visual art and performance, in a differentiated way as promised.

In today's dance hall of the Alte Kaserne, the Geneva ensemble Batida performed with Diĝitawhich means digital in Esperanto, presented a minimalist homage to the digital world for "everyone aged ten and over". Four musicians equipped with synthesizers and samplers and a sound director were shielded inside a cube of screens. Graphics with abstract landscapes in black and white by the drawing collective Hécatombe were projected onto them. With Glenn the festival finale was celebrated in the "border line club culture" between 8.30 and 10.00 pm. It was intended for "people aged twelve and over who like to dance". The two creators, Nicolas Kort and Ricardo Eizirik, focused on "industrial and dark electronic" and promised that their concert would be loud. It was very, very loud.

The other two festival titles have already been decided. Turn" will be followed by "Rise" and "Leap". Both are very much to be wished to the management collective. In order to increase quality and topicality, it would be urgently advisable for the Tonhalle management to stay out of the programming and for the Collegium Novum, which is also well-funded by the city and specializes in new music, not to be absent due to its participation in a competition for young talent, but to participate without any ifs or buts.

Market researchers from Econcept are conducting surveys on "Sonic Matter" 2021 on behalf of the city of Zurich in order to record the preferences and reactions of the audience as well as their views on diversity and inclusion. It remains to be hoped that, in the interests of successful location marketing, the city authorities will not draw the wrong conclusions afterwards, as in the case of the Bührle Foundation ... Of course, a total of 973 visitors for all live events raises the question: Will the city's expenditure of three quarters of a million francs for three editions remain available for advanced music if "Sonic Matter" goes belly up one day in the distant future, or will it then be relegated entirely to underground music with the argument that it too can be experimental?

French violist Olivier Carillier completed his Master's degree in Performance with Silvia Simionescu in 2020, having previously studied with Raphaël Oleg. He is already working as assistant principal violist in the Basel orchestra and will take up his permanent position for the new season in August 2022.

Brazilian Ariane Rovesse is studying for a Master's degree in Performance with François Benda. Tamás Dávid is an alumnus (class of Adelina Oprean and Raphaël Oleg) and obtained his soloist diploma at the FHNW School of Music in summer 2020.

As the researcher from the Department of Musicology at the University of Heidelberg emphasizes, this is intended to close a central gap in music research on the 19th century. The Saxon State and University Library in Dresden and the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar are involved in the project. The DFG is funding the project for a maximum of twelve years. The first project phase has now been approved with funding of 1.2 million euros.

The digital Liszt portal is being developed jointly at the three project locations Heidelberg, Dresden and Weimar. The aim is to make the composer's works and their versions visible and researchable. The researchers involved are also planning to visualize the often complex contexts of the works.

More info: https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/de/newsroom/franz-liszt-digital

All choirs, clubs, associations and choral music institutions in Germany are called upon to join in and place their own activities in 2022 under the motto "Year of Choirs". According to the association, the aim is to work together to ensure that "choirs receive nationwide support, young talent is strengthened in the long term and the future of choral music can be secured".

The German Choral Association itself will offer choirs the biggest possible stage in 2022 with its own major events such as the German Choral Festival, which will take place in Leipzig from 26 to 29 May with more than 350 registered ensembles, a digital choir map and other lighthouse projects and campaigns.

More info: www.jahr-der-choere.de

The French manufacturer of clarinet and saxophone accessories, Ligaphone, is expanding its product range with the realization of the new double-profile reed, a reed with a recess (counter-profile) on the underside of the reed. This is the first time in the history of woodwind instruments that the top and bottom of the reed have been designed to complement each other. After a long period of research, the two complementary profiles complement each other perfectly. The elongated hollowing/deepening on the underside of the reed improves the vibration. The profile of the upper side of the blade corresponds to the traditional manufacturing method and is characterized by particular precision. The reed is freed from its internal tensions, shows more flexibility, a better response, less "deformation" at the reed edges. The reed is made from the famous natural cane of the French Var region in the best reed-making tradition.

The "Classic" collection is available in 6 gauges (from 1½ to 4) for Bb clarinet (French system) as well as soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone. It will soon be supplemented by the "Jazz" collection.

www.ligaphone.com

Image: Fewskulchor - wikimedia.com

Meredith Kuliew, violist and initiator of the project, has noticed that a lot of experimentation and new formats are being developed in the concert business. However, the work of female composers is still being overlooked. This is why FemaleClassics aims to give a stage exclusively to music composed by women.

The first cycle of three concerts will take place in Zurich from June 16 to 19. Prior to this, amateur musicians (violin, viola, cello) are invited to a workshop on June 11 to actively explore chamber music works by female composers.

According to the ZHdK press release, Schoch studied composition for film, theater and media. The sound artist and game soundtrack composer experiments with a wide variety of sounds, from plastic trombones to old organ pipes, giving video games a unique atmosphere.

In spring 2020, his master project, the soundtrack for the game "FAR: Lone Sails", was honored with the Best Game Music award at the Game Audio Awards. The Game Audio Awards are among the most important European awards in the field of game music and sounds.

On the weekend of February 26 and 27, the Swiss jazz scene will meet at the Progr cultural center in Bern, where the 14th Jazzwerkstatt Bern takes place. The initiators of the Swiss Jazz Days, led by Simon Petermann, want to bring together Swiss jazz professionals in a national interest group in order to strengthen the social perception and international appeal of Swiss jazz. The players in the Swiss jazz scene should regularly exchange ideas and realize joint projects. This includes an annual interactive congress, such as the one now taking place at the end of February. Various formats such as workshops (partly organized by Sonart - Musicians Switzerland organized), presentations, discussions and speed dating get participants talking. Tickets and program via

swissjazzdays.ch
 

Minasi was co-founder and from 2012 to 2015 director of the ensemble Pomo d'Oro, since 2017 he has been chief conductor of the Motzarteumorchester of Salzburg and artist in residence at the Ensemble Resonanz of the Elbphilarmonie in Hamburg. Previous engagements at Zurich Opera House include the ballet by Christian Spuck The Sandman with the music of Schnittke and Schumann as well as Mozart's Don Giovanni and Abduction from the Seraglio, furthermore Orlando Paladino, Il Matrimonio Segreto et al.

As a soloist and concertmaster, Minasi has worked with Le Concert des Nations by Jordi Savall, Accademia Bizantina, Concerto Italiano, Il Giardino Armonico, Al Ayre Español, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di S.Cecilia, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid and at the invitation of Kent Nagano at the Knowlton Belcanto Festival (Canada).

The Zurich Opera House's La Scintilla ensemble was founded in 1998 as the result of a collaboration between the opera house and the original sound specialist Nikolaus Harnoncourt, on the basis of which the orchestra initially adapted playing techniques to the latest findings in historical performance practice.

The continuation of the financial aid is urgent due to the highly tense and existence-threatening economic situation of cultural actors and the general epidemiological development of recent weeks, writes the canton. For losses between November 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, cultural enterprises and cultural professionals submitted a total of 492 applications for loss compensation by November 30, 2021. In addition, 53 applications were submitted for contributions to transformation projects.

The coronavirus support measures for the cultural sector would have expired at the end of 2021 due to the time limit in Art. 11 of the Federal Covid-19 Act. The National Council and Council of States therefore decided in the 2021 winter session to extend the measures until the end of 2022. On 17 December 2021, the Federal Council also extended the period of validity of the Covid-19 Cultural Ordinance, which specifies Art. 11.

The government estimates that a maximum of CHF 15.4 million will be required for the third phase in terms of a cost ceiling. Half of this (CHF 7.7 million each) would have to be financed by the federal government and half by the canton. This results in an additional requirement for cantonal funds of CHF 4.04 million. The cost ceiling for the cantonal funds for the measures financed half and half by the federal government therefore amounts to a total of CHF 13.89 million for the second and third phases together (instead of the previous CHF 9.85 million for the second phase).

Original article:
https://www.sg.ch/news/sgch_allgemein/2022/01/covid-finanzhilfe-fuer-kultur-soll-weitergefuehrt-werden.html

Richard Parncutt and Lazar Radovanovic analyzed databases with 100 arrangements of jazz standards. The results showed, among other things, that root notes, which are theoretically less ambiguous, are more frequently doubled in the bass, and root notes of minor chords are interpreted more ambiguously. Diminished triads are often interpreted as fragments of a seventh chord.

The results are consistent with the theories of psychoacoustician Ernst Terhardt that the perception of musical chords is the result of cultural and historical processes.

Original article:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10298649211062934

The project starts on January 22 with a lecture by musicologist Natalia Treyer and the first rehearsals. During the rehearsal weekend on April 2 and 3, the choir will travel through Switzerland in Stravinsky's footsteps. The mass is to be performed in fall 2022 or spring 2023 together with Jubilate Deo by Giovanni Gabrieli and O sacrum Convivum by Gabriel Jackson. The musical director is Lilian Köhli.
Further information and registration:

www.singschule-chur.ch

Gaffigan currently holds leading artistic positions with the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, the Trondheim Symfoniorkester & Opera, the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra and the Nederlands Radio Filharmonisch Orkest. In summer 2021, he ended his ten-year tenure as Principal Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra.

As a guest conductor, he regularly leads renowned concert and opera orchestras in Europe, North America and Asia, including the orchestras of the Metropolitan Opera, the Opéra national de Paris, the Bavarian State Opera and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.

Heilbronn-born conductor Erina Yashima is currently Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where she has assisted Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and other guest conductors since 2019 and conducts concert programs herself. As a scholarship holder of the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she assisted Riccardo Muti.

According to the announcement by the German Music Industry Association (BVMI), the first singles charts under the new rules will cover the sales period from December 30, 2021 to January 6, 2022. Another new feature in 2022 is that YouTube will now also contribute data to determine the singles charts; this applies to both free and premium streams. The Official German Charts are determined by GfK Entertainment on behalf of the German Music Industry Association.

The charts are revenue-based and are not only based on the number of sales and streams, but also on the price achieved for a product and the value of a stream. The average value of a free stream used to determine the singles charts is calculated and regularly reviewed by the BVMI on a fiduciary basis using data from BVMI member companies.