SMPV Berne
From June 30 to July 2, 2023, the Bern Lake Festival will take place around Lake Egelsee - from See to Klee.
The SMPV Bern has been invited to put together the ad hoc Seefestspiele choir, which will perform on Saturday, July 1 and Sunday, July 2 at the Seefestspiele under the direction of Johannes Schröder and is looking for amateur, professional and "under-the-shower" singers from 6 to 99.
Program:
Morning has broken (Cat Stevens; arr. J. Schröder)
Si ya hamba (African; arr. F. Gohl)
Santo santo (argentinian; arr. J.Schröder)
Let my light shine bright (Spiritual; arr. L. Maierhofer)
Weisch es dü (Eugen Meier)
Va pensiero (Giuseppe Verdi; Prisoners' Chorus from "Nabucco")
Further information and the electronic registration form can be found at: www.smpv.ch/bern/special-events-des-smpv-bern
Lake Festival Choir Flyer A5

SMPV Northwestern Switzerland
The next Student concerts will take place - on Saturdays - on June 24, September 16 and December 16, 2023.
A contribution towards expenses can be requested from the section for piano accompaniment at the concerts. Further information and registration at www.smpv.ch/nordwestschweiz/schuelerinnen-konzerte. Information can also be obtained from the office: nordwestschweiz@smpv.ch - Tel. 061 272 35 68.
If you are interested in the teachers' concert on 16.9. at 19:30, please also contact the office.
SMPV Talent Stage 2023
The Northwestern Switzerland section is once again organizing a music competition for children and young people between the ages of 7 and 20 on 18 November 2023.
The prizewinners' concert will take place on November 25, 2023.
Registration deadline is September 30, 2023Further information and registration: www.smpv.ch/nordwestschweiz/smpv-talentbuehne-2023

Marianne Wälchli:  What motivated you to organize toddler concerts?
Jakob Valentin Herzog: We know the situation as parents in which a visit to a concert always involves considerable effort. A babysitter has to be found and everything has to be organized. Or if you go to a concert with a small child, you can never be sure that you will be able to stay until the end. So the idea was to make a low-threshold concert visit possible. Ideally, this can also be the impetus for parents to take part in cultural life again, regardless of children's performances. In addition, the Thurgau section is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its founding, which encouraged us to try something new and bigger.

In the first concert you were in the audience with your little daughter, in the second concert you played yourself. What did you experience?
First comes an armada of baby carriages. Then a cheerful, colorful hustle and bustle begins. At the beginning of the concert it is very quiet, but then the noise level rises continuously until the end of the concert. The freshness with which children and parents experience the concert is wonderful. Fortunately, the awe and caution that we know from classical concerts are far away.
It requires a lot of concentration from the musicians, but the children's reactions are very immediate and direct. The gratitude of the children and parents is enormously rewarding, and the best gift is when you later receive compliments on the concert from unknown listeners on the street.

Why did you program a different style for each of the first four concerts?
This has resulted from the composition of the board. Sarah Bächi is a jazz/pop musician, Barbara Hidber studied composition as well as the violin, Wolfgang Pailer came up with the idea of the romantic accordion concerto, and I myself am trained as a baroque cellist. This diversity offers people who don't normally attend concerts a welcome change. And it can arouse the curiosity of an experienced concert audience for unfamiliar styles.

Do you have the impression that the little ones react differently to different styles of music?
Not really. Of course, they react more strongly if they already know an Andrew Bond song jazzed up, but Corelli's Follia also had a rousing effect. More interesting here are the reactions of the different age groups. While children under the age of 2 to 3 tend to simply watch, the older ones are more active - the wow effect wears off more quickly.

What type of room is suitable for such concerts; how many people can it work with?
A large, bright room with a carpeted floor. Very reverberant rooms are unsuitable - there is always a certain level of noise.
The ZKO (Zurich Chamber Orchestra) offers such concerts on a much larger scale - of course in concert halls that are built in such a way that the stage sound is amplified. Where this is not the case, 80 people is certainly a maximum

Is it just about the little ones experiencing classical music and their parents being able to attend concerts with them, or are there already music education activities at the concerts?
Thanks to the different ideas of the participants, a variety of forms were created. For example, the children were encouraged to dance along with scarves in the first concert, while we designed the second as a "normal" concert. The upcoming concert with contemporary compositions, on the other hand, will again be very interactive. The pure concert form is perhaps not quite ideal for a heterogeneous audience, as we have in Thurgau

Can you describe the reactions of the large and small audiences in general?
They are very diverse! From children who just watch, to children who start dancing, who crawl on instruments or who are more interested in their friends than in the music. Some parents encourage their children to move, others enjoy simply being able to enjoy the music in peace. For some of the adults, it is obviously their first ever visit to a concert, and the reactions have been very positive across the board.

Are you planning to continue the series and what would you like to change after your first experiences?
As far as I'm concerned, definitely, but a Board resolution on this is still pending.
For example, my wife and I would like to integrate pictures - she is a wonderful painter and is already working on her first sketches. Sarah Bächi suggests perhaps making the "afterwards" even more sociable so that you can get to know other families. But the most important thing is that you are convinced of what you are performing - children are incredibly sensitive.

Flyer Crawling Concerts 2023

The SMPV Bern training day on the topic of "Appearance" will take place on June 3, 2023 at EGW, Nägeligasse 9 in Bern. Be inspired by six inspiring workshops and enjoy being able to exchange ideas with colleagues once again.

In "Body and Mind", Isabel Lerchmüller shows us how we can prepare ourselves optimally for a performance with exercises from Jin Shin Jyutsu and Aikido, in "Performance Techniques from the Practice of a Magician" Helmut Wiegiehser teaches us techniques for a successful performance and in "Accompanying Performances - Safely and Sensitively" Vreni Minnig shows us how we can give our students confidence for their performance.

After the lunch break, Margitta Rosales gets us going with exercises from sports mental training for musicians in "Jetzt vergiss die Technik... Mensch!", Zita Zimmermann gets us fit for the stage in "Vom Lampenfieber zur Vorfreude", and Kaspar Zwicky in "Schwingende Körper" lets us experience how we can use the right warm-up strategy to get our bodies into "performance vibration" with the instrument.

The Course flyer and the link to the electronic registration form can be found at www.smpv.ch/bern Please direct your questions to bern@smpv.ch

The number of participants is limited. - The registration deadline is May 3, 2023.

In contrast to employees with unemployment insurance, the self-employed and freelancers have no insurance to compensate them financially in the event of a drop in orders or total unemployment. Syndicom, a trade union in the communications and media sector, has developed a model to fill this gap: ALV-S unemployment insurance.

Annette Dannecker 78% of the self-employed and freelancers surveyed by syndicom stated that they were unable to build up any or sufficient financial reserves to protect themselves against loss of earnings under the current regime. For this reason, an unemployment insurance scheme was developed that is financed in equal parts by the self-employed person and their clients.

Since music teachers are also often partially or fully self-employed, this insurance for the unemployed is an exciting approach that needs to be looked at more closely:

In principle, an additional 4% ALV-S should be charged on every order - i.e. in our case on a single music lesson or a semester contract - in the same way as ALV for salaried employees. These 4% are paid into an insured person's account. The self-employed person also pays 4% into an ALV-S savings account. He/she then "owns" two private accounts with the unemployment insurance fund, which he/she cannot access directly. He/she will receive the deposits in the savings account back on retirement or if he/she gives up self-employment. This account is used up first in the event of total or partial unemployment. The insurance account is only debited afterwards. This is intended to prevent people from pretending to be unemployed, as they would effectively be cheating themselves by withdrawing their savings in advance. However, no third-party funds would be withdrawn. The insurance account remains in the possession of the insurance company in the event of retirement or cessation of self-employment in order to maintain employment offices similar to the RAVs and to cover all administrative costs.

In the event of total unemployment, the self-employed person will receive 80% of their average salary from self-employment to cover running costs such as studio rent, instrument maintenance and living expenses, so that they can continue to focus on attracting new students.

But would our pupils be prepared to pay 4% more for a lesson, i.e. CHF 104 for a lesson that used to cost CHF 100? Would our pupils bear these additional costs so that their teacher has social security? Or would the teachers often have to bear the entire 8% themselves?

The question arises as to whether the insurance should be declared compulsory in order to prevent a teacher from being left without cover in the event of unemployment because they have not taken out insurance for fear of not being able to afford it or because they feel they cannot expect the 4% surcharge from the pupils.

If you would like to find out more about this model, you can find further information at: www.syndicom.ch/branchen/visuelle-kommunikation/alvfuerselbstaendige

The model was submitted for consultation this February and everyone is invited to comment on it.

Please send any suggestions for improvement to Annette Dannecker (at annette.dannecker@smpv.ch), which she collects and forwards to syndicom. She is also happy to answer questions about the jobless insurance model.

The SMPV will be actively involved in this consultation and will accompany the process, as music teachers have different requirements than media professionals and these must be taken into account when the model is finalized.

Music teachers are often neither organized in a trade union nor in a professional association, although the sector has many "construction sites" that can only be tackled by trade unions.

"I didn't even know that the SMPV is also an association for salaried music teachers," said the person I spoke to on the phone last week. He had contacted me because he was having problems with chain employment contracts and a lack of pension fund insurance. Two days later, Karen Krüttli, Co-President of the Zurich section, said: "You know, the main problem in the union work for music teachers is that colleagues have become so used to simply making a fist of it and accepting unfavorable working conditions, and that they often don't tell us, or tell us too late, where the shoe pinches. For example, it is difficult to do anything about the non-competition clause in the regulations of a particular music school if we find out about it after a good three quarters of the teachers concerned have already signed the renewed contract because they are afraid of losing their job or simply because they are not aware of the problem."

The SMPV is a professional association and not just a trade union. From its many years as a provider of private professional music education, it has retained valuable services such as the organization of music lessons, level examinations, talent competitions and a wide range of further training courses, and the platforms www.mein-musikunterricht.ch and also to some extent www.rent-a-musician.ch serve self-employed people more than employees, but in its trade union work it is much easier for the SMPV to do something for employed music teachers than for the self-employed. Here are two examples of trade union issues that the SMPV is currently dealing with: The problem of "creeping reductions in workloads at music schools" seems to us to be solvable: Anyone who becomes partially unemployed must have their workload reduced by a full day - i.e. by 20% for a full-time position - in order to be entitled to receive unemployment benefits. If a music teacher loses 2-3 lessons each semester, he or she will not achieve this 20% reduction in one fell swoop, but over a period of perhaps three years. We are currently working on various proposals, e.g. that the average value of the loss of workload over a certain period of time, e.g. three years, would also be decisive for reaching this threshold. On the other hand, we do not see a really good solution to the problem of the lack of unemployment insurance for the self-employed. How can you prove, for example, that you have not received any orders and have not simply turned them all down? Although we are observing Syndicom's efforts regarding the unemployment insurance model, we see even greater difficulties in its implementation for self-employed music teachers.
Trade union work is slow work: you have to analyze a problem, work out one or more proposed solutions that have a chance of being implemented, and then you need partners who will help you to submit the proposals to the right political bodies and ensure that we are heard. For the SMPV, this is first and foremost the SGB and its cantonal associations. Our members also have personal political contacts. The more we get involved, such as the Zurich and East-Southeast Switzerland sections did when drafting the respective cantonal music school laws, the more the SMPV is perceived as representing the interests of music teachers in Switzerland. The latter paid off in the city of Chur, for example, when it came to major uncertainties regarding the continuation of basic music education and the associated performance contracts. The OSO President, Annette Dannecker, was invited to the "round table" on music education.

The cantonal, regional and national networks will continue to help us in our trade union work in the future, when we are looking for solutions to our members' regional labour law problems, when we seriously address the major issue of CLAs, or when we fight to ensure that music education is not sometimes politically labelled "education" and sometimes "culture", depending on which label it costs less, but that music education and art lessons are perceived as the essential link between education and culture and that they are subsidized accordingly.

There are therefore many trade union and political construction sites in our sector. It is therefore incredibly important that more music teachers organize themselves in a trade union or professional association so that the associations that are committed to improving working conditions in the field of music education can also lend more weight to their initiatives. Each music teacher must weigh up for himself or herself which association will bring him or her the most advantages. For example, if someone teaches part-time at a music school and also works at an elementary school, membership of a teachers' association is probably the best option. If, on the other hand, someone works at a music school and also teaches some private pupils, he or she is almost certainly best off joining the SMPV. Musicians who primarily give concerts and also teach music need to check which association best represents their interests and which range of services is most useful to them.

If music teachers have joined an association, they should draw the association's leaders' attention to labor law problems in good time and present them with ideas or partially developed proposals for improving their working conditions.

And then it is essential that the associations concerned regularly exchange information about the status of their work and work together for improvements. The SMPV certainly offers a helping hand!

Sezione di lingua italiana

La SSPM supports the popular legislative initiative "100 giorni per la musica":

L'art. 67a della Costituzione federale, votato dal popolo il 23 settembre 2012, prevede che la Confederazione e i Cantoni promuovano la formazione musicale, in particolare dell'infanzia e della gioventù. In Ticino, this constitutional article, after 10 years from popular approval, is still a lettera morta. Se nella maggior parte dei Cantoni, le famiglie si prendono carico del 32% dei costi della formazione musicale, in Ticino questa percentuale è addirittura del 75%. This situation is discriminatory in the face of the less active sections of the population and does not favor musical training or the promotion of talent. The time has come to align Ticino with the rest of Switzerland.

Ulteriori informazioni e il modulo per la firma sono disponibili sul sito 100giorniperlamusica.ch.

Berne section

The SMPV Bern is once again organizing music lessons and a classical music jam on Saturday, 25 March. Registrations for the music lessons until Wednesday, March 1 at smpv.ch/bern/registration-music-lessons-smpv-bern and for the classical jam at smpv.ch/bern/registration-for-classic-jam 

From the SMPV's legal advisory practice: Dr. iur. Yvette Kovacs, SMPV legal advisor and attorney at law in Zurich, answers questions from SMPV members.

Question from an SMPV member: My landlady is calling on me to save electricity in order to prevent an energy shortage in Switzerland. She now stipulates a room temperature of 18° in my classroom and recently turned up unannounced to check the temperature. Is she allowed to do that?

Dr. Kovacs:  1 The rights and obligations of tenants and landlords are governed by Articles 253 et seq. OR and in the ordinance issued in this regard. Among other things, these articles stipulate that the tenants are mutually obliged to show consideration and to treat the rented property with care. In particular, the rented property must be handed over and maintained in a usable condition, which also includes a normal room temperature. However, there is no regulation specifying an exact minimum or maximum temperature. In practice, however, guideline values have been developed for various rooms in apartments, which can be found on the website energieswitzerland.ch are listed: A temperature of at least 20° should be maintained in living and recreation areas. This also applies to classrooms.
Unless otherwise agreed in the existing rental agreement, no direct, legally enforceable obligation to conserve resources can therefore be derived from the CO and the associated ordinance, even if the careful and responsible use of resources is always in the interests of all parties involved.
If the temperature falls below the specified guide values, this may constitute a defect under tenancy law. The tenant is then generally entitled to a reduction in the rent. The amount of the reduction depends on the individual case and is at the discretion of the court. In individual cases, a rent reduction of 10 to 20 percent has been granted if the temperature falls below the minimum temperature by a few degrees.

2 The tenancy law is superseded by the public-law laws and ordinances that serve to protect the national supply (National Supply Act LVG).
Article 32 of the LVG can be used as a basis for measures that must be taken to deal with a severe shortage. The Federal Council has not yet declared an imminent power shortage. However, an ordinance has been drafted and is ready to be implemented in the event of an emergency. The draft ordinance contains all possible measures in the event of a severe shortage. This does not mean that all of them will come into force in the event of a shortage. Among other things, indoor heating is to be limited to 20 degrees. This value corresponds to the minimum value that is already practiced today in tenancy law.
How are the bans monitored? The provision is based on the fact that the vast majority of the population abides by the law. Controls and prosecution are the responsibility of the cantons. The LVG does not provide a basis for administrative fines. Violations of the regulations are punished as misdemeanors and can be dealt with by the public prosecutor's office by means of a penalty order. However, there is no provision for monitoring compliance with the measures by private individuals, in particular landlords.

3. the conclusion is that the landlord must guarantee a minimum temperature of 20° in classrooms. The landlord may not introduce lower temperatures and certainly not enforce them through unauthorized inspections

The 2022 delegates' meeting dealt in depth with the topic of "recruiting members". Since the complete outsourcing of professional training and its orientation as a purely professional association, the SMPV has changed considerably. Today, it represents the interests of employed and self-employed music teachers, for whom it is continuously expanding its range of services. The "Communication" working group was entrusted with the challenging task of finding a solution for how to publicize the SMPV's expanded range of services to music teachers of all ages. We are all the more pleased that we were able to gain 64 new members this year and that more and more students on the Master of Arts in Music Pedagogy course are recognizing the benefits of SMPV membership.

A lot of work awaits the association in the trade union sector, and it must strive to find solutions, e.g. to the problem of the lack of unemployment insurance cover in the event of a gradual decline in workloads, the fact that salaries for employed music teachers remain the same despite the growing number of duties, and the complete lack of unemployment insurance for the self-employed.

For our concert booking platform launched in November 2022 www.rent-a-musician.ch we have received many compliments, and thanks to the new platform some members have remembered that they could also revise their profile on the private lessons platform www.mein-musikunterricht. ch could be revised again. We are very pleased about that. But the growing range of services also means that the work of the Central Board is becoming more complex and time-consuming. In line with the overdue professionalization of the association, the Central Board was reconstituted at its December meeting: Two ZV members now form the operational part of the Central Board and take care of the diverse day-to-day business, i.e. together with the Central Secretary, all operational tasks of the association. The other Board members form the strategic part of the Board. They discuss the SMPV's strategy and intervene when operational business comes to a standstill. Together with the operational part, they make the decisions that are important for the association. We are confident that the new model will help us find committed new members of the Board of Directors who are happy to think along with us and contribute their good ideas, even if they do not have time for operational work and only want to attend a limited number of meetings.

In addition, a specialist department structure will be re-established in the association, as it already existed at the time of SMPV professional training. The newly created specialist groups will deal with issues such as quality management and specialist further training and will promote exchange between colleagues. The difficult coronavirus period, in which everyone was thrown back on their own, has shown us how incredibly important a professional network is, that we are stronger together and that peer-to-peer exchange is enriching and helps us move forward.

We look forward to meeting you at one of our events and exchanging ideas with you!

The Co-Presidents Annette Dannecker and Paola De Luca