The 46-year-old Carmen Kiser grew up in Sarnen, graduated from the cantonal school in Obwalden and studied ethnology, environmental sciences and English literature at the University of Zurich. She also completed a Master's degree in museology at the University of Sydney. She then spent nine years developing and managing history education projects at the Museum Aargau.

From 2018 to 2023, she managed the Museum Bruder Klaus in Sachseln and organized numerous special exhibitions on regional cultural history and contemporary art. More recently, she has completed various further training courses in the fields of cultural management and cultural policy. Since March 2024, she has been working as a project coordinator for the Culture Department of the Canton of Lucerne. Carmen Kiser lives with her family in Sarnen.

Andreas Staier was born in Göttingen in 1955. He studied piano and harpsichord in Hanover and Amsterdam and became harpsichordist with the ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln. He has worked as a freelance soloist and as a harpsichord and fortepiano soloist since 1986. He has been an Associate Artist of the Dijon Opera since September 2011.

In recognition of special services to the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, the Lord Mayor of the City of Leipzig awards the Bach Medal annually as part of the Bach Festival. The jury for the award of the Bach Medal of the City of Leipzig is made up of the Gewandhauskapellmeister, the Rector of the Leipzig University of Music and Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy", the Thomaskantor, the President and the Director of the Bach Archive. The first recipients from 2003 onwards were Gustav Leonhardt, Helmuth Rilling, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Ton Koopman and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Noah Kim studied at the National University in Seoul and worked as part of the Zurich Opera House's young talent program in productions such as The marked by Franz Schreker, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto and Il Barbiere di Siviglia roles. He had previously made his debut as Belcore in L'Elisir d'amore at the Seoul Opera and as Masetto in Don Giovanni at the Bregenz Festival.

The International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition was held at the Vienna Chamber Opera from 1982 to 2012. Since 2013, it has organized qualification and final rounds worldwide as an independent association. The annual competition is held in the opera (and operetta) categories, with singers being judged together. This year's competition took place in Latvia.

On June 19, the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw) will present the Herta & Kurt Blaukopf Award for outstanding dissertations at the university for the third time. Irena Müller-Brozović will be honored for her dissertation "The Concert as Resonance Space". The award-winner is head of the MA Music Pedagogy minor at Bern University of the Arts (HKB).

The dissertation "The concert as a resonance space" focuses on resonance-affine music mediation through intensive experience and involvement. Irena Müller-Brozović investigated how music educators can promote musical involvement in concert situations with strong musical experiences and places this in a theoretical framework. The publication was co-financed by the HKB and is published by transcript Verlag.

The Herta & Kurt Blaukopf Award is presented for special achievements in the context of scientific doctoral studies and serves to make special achievements visible.

Hardmeier will fulfill this role together with Matthias Arter, the ensemble's oboist. Matthias Arter has been responsible for the artistic direction since the end of 2020, until summer 2022 together with Susanne Peters.

Andri Hardmeier headed the music department of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia from 2011 to 2022. Since 2004, he has worked as a concert and opera dramaturge at various leading theatres and festivals, including the Theater Freiburg, the Hanover State Opera, the Ruhrtriennale and the Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals.

He holds a Master's degree in Theoretical Physics and a Master of Advanced Studies in Cultural Management. Last year, he worked in an advisory capacity on an analysis of the CNZ by the consulting firm Metrum GmbH and thus got to know the CNZ better.

Born in 1965 Jan Schultszinitially studied horn and piano in his home city of Amsterdam as well as in Basel and Lausanne and played as a horn player in various orchestras. At the beginning of the 1990s, he trained as a conductor with Manfred Honeck, Ralf Weikert and Ilya Musin in St. Petersburg. He lives in Basel, where he is a professor at the University of Music. As a guest conductor, he mainly leads orchestras in Switzerland, Holland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, China and South America.

He was Kapellmeister at the Norske Opera in Oslo, conducted the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest and the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège. For 10 years he was Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Orchestre de Chambre de Neuchâtel. In 2000, he founded the Opera St. Moritz and was its Artistic Director until 2012. He has been artistic director of the Engadin Festival since 2008 and artistic director of the Schubertiade Riehen since 2022.

At the same time as the election of the Chief Conductor, the Board of the CMB the position of Principal Guest Conductor will be filled for the first time, also from the 24/25 season. Benjamin Reiners, outgoing General Music Director of the state capital Kiel and future Chief Conductor of the Robert Schumann Philharmonie Chemnitz and GMD of Theater Chemnitz, will take on this role.

Both amateur and professional dancers are more compatible than the rest of the population and are characterized by a high degree of openness and extraversion. Previous studies have found that this also applies to musicians. However, the MPIEA team also found an interesting difference between the two groups: in contrast to musicians, dancers are not more neurotic, but - on the contrary - less neurotic than people who do not dance.

In cooperation with the director of a dance school in Freiburg and the dance director at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, the MPIEA team analyzed data from 5435 people from Sweden and 574 people from Germany. The Big Five personality profiles openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism were examined. The study results were recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences published.

Original article:
Christensen, J. F., Wesseldijk, L., Mosing, M., Fayn, K., Schmidt, E., Blattmann, M., Sancho-Escanero, L., & Ullén, F. (2024). The Dancer Personality: Comparing Dancers and Non-Dancers in Germany and Sweden. Personality and Individual Differences, 112603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2024.112603

Last season, only 7.5% of works performed in orchestral concert halls were by women. This is a slight decrease compared to the previous year (7.7 percent). Of the works performed, 5.8 percent were by white women and 1.6 percent by women from the global majority: Black women (0.59 percent), Asian women (0.5 percent), women of mixed race (0.40 percent), Indigenous women (0.07 percent) and women from the Middle East (0.02 percent).

The report by Donne - Women in Music analyzed the repertoire of 111 orchestras in 30 countries for the 2023-2024 season. It builds on an annual survey that began in 2018 and identifies trends in diversity and equality programming in the global concert repertoire.

Link to the report:
https://donne-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/DonneReport2024.pdf

Nuit Incolore was born in Vietnam in 2001 under the real name Théo Marclay and grew up in Saxon. His song "Dépassé" became the diamond single in France and was therefore selected for French television channel TF1's Chanson of the Year 2023. Nuit Incolore also won the French-language Discovery of the Year category at the NRJ Music Awards 2023, the first Swiss artist to win the award since its inception. In 2024, he was nominated in the "Victoires de la musique" in the male discovery category. As part of his tour this year, he will be performing at Sion sous les étoiles, the Paléo Festival and the Olympia.

Ella van der Woude was born in Sion in 1987. At the age of 18, she moved to Holland, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts at the Amsterdam Conservatory in 2010 and a Master of Music in film music composition in 2014. In addition to compositions for the cinema, she released the album "Solo Piano" in 2020. In October 2022, she was the first woman ever to receive the Dutch "Golden Calf" award, an equivalent to the French César, for the best film music for "Moloch" by Nico van den Brink. In May 2024, the film "Armand" by Norwegian director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, for which she produced the soundtrack, won the prize for Best Sound Creation and the Golden Camera at the Cannes Film Festival.

Hubert Hazebroucq is a French dancer, choreographer and researcher specializing in Renaissance and Baroque dance. He discovered historical dance as a contemporary dancer in Lyon in 1998 and has since performed for various choreographers such as Christine Bayle (Cie L'Éclat des Muses), Marie-Geneviève Massé (Cie L'Éventail), Lieven Baert and Sigrid T'Hooft. He was trained in Italian Renaissance dance by Barbara Sparti and Gloria Giordano.

As a choreographer, his aim is to present old repertoires with live music and to bring together creation, emotion and research in historically informed performance. His dance company Les Corps Éloquents, founded in 2008 and based in Paris, collaborates with renowned ensembles, in particular Les Arts Florissants under the direction of William Christie for Molière et ses musiques 2022 (Versailles, Philharmonie de Paris,...).

More info:
https://www.fhnw.ch/de/die-fhnw/hochschulen/musik/die-schola-cantorum-basiliensis/aktuelles/dozent_fuer_renaissance_tanz_hubert_hazebroucq

According to international media reports, the hacker group ShinyHunters claims to have penetrated the systems of Ticketmaster and Live Nation and obtained 1.3 terabytes of data from around 560 million users. The group apparently wants to extort 500,000 dollars.

The group is believed to have obtained email addresses, payment details and credit card numbers. The breach was first discovered on May 15 when unusual activity was detected on Ticketmaster's servers. However, the US law enforcement authorities were not notified until May 25.

Ticketmaster UK was previously fined £1.25 million for failing to keep its customers' personal data safe following a cyberattack in 2018.

Brogli-Sacher studied trombone and conducting at the music academies in Zurich, Bern, Lucerne and Vienna. Following engagements at the Stadttheater St. Gallen, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo and the opera house in Halle/Saale, he served as opera director of the Hallwil Opera and as chief conductor of the Jiangsu Symphony Orchestra in Nanjing China. Since 2020, he has been principal guest conductor of the "Ettore Pozzoli" Philharmonic Orchestra in Seregno/Milan and has been director of the Lake Zurich Youth Symphony Orchestra since 2013.

The Neue Lausitzer Philharmonie (NLP) is the orchestra of the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater in Görlitz. It maintains a four-part theater at the Görlitz and Zittau locations and also performs on stages throughout the Upper Lusatia-Lower Silesia cultural region. The Görlitz location produces musical theater, dance and concerts.

Brocal has been deputy head of the City of Winterthur's Office of Culture since 2021, and was interim head of the office from April to September 2023. She previously worked for the Swiss Films Foundation, including as a member of the Executive Board and as Head of Programs and International Relations, as well as for the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia as a project manager and curator. She was also active as an expert on various specialist committees.

Sabina Brocal studied Film Studies, German Studies and Business Administration at the University of Zurich and completed an MAS in Cultural Management at the University of Basel. With the appointment of Sabina Brocal, the management of the Department of Culture is now complete, according to the city's press release. Due to the increase in tasks resulting from the implementation of the "tip initiative" and the new cultural contract with Basel-Landschaft, a continuous second management level will be created at the Culture Department. The Grand Council approved a corresponding proposal by the Government Council last year.

Sol Gabetta was born in Argentina in 1981 and has held Swiss citizenship since 2018. She studied at the Basel Music Academy and has long lived in the municipality of Olsberg in the canton of Aargau. She has directed the Solsberg Chamber Music Festival there since it was founded in 2006 and has taught at the Basel Music Academy since 2005.

Other award winners are: With the composer Ivo Antognini (Locarno, Ticino), Switzerland is represented on an international level with a reference for contemporary choral composition. Simone Aubert (Geneva) is a multi-instrumentalist who has been active in the alternative experimental scene in Geneva for more than 20 years. Simone Felber (Lucerne) is without doubt one of the most interesting and active personalities in new Swiss folk music and shows with formations such as Echo vom Eierstock or Simone Felber's iheimisch how contemporary and emancipated this genre can be.

Leila Schayegh (Winterthur, Zurich) is a leading researcher and violinist of early music. Tapiwa Svosve (Zurich) holds a key position in contemporary jazz as a saxophonist and composer. The group Zeal & Ardor (Basel), led by Manuel Gagneux, is generally recognized as the founder of a musical style that brings together gospel and black metal. In his works, Zimoun (Bern) impressively combines sound with architecture, movement with sculpture and installation with spatial effects.

The special prizes are awarded to important institutions and players for their contribution to the Swiss music scene. They recognize personalities, venues, labels or educational projects that actively promote the status of music, the promotion of music creation and the dissemination of cultural heritage in Switzerland. The Special Prizes Music 2024 go to:

LUFF (Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival), Smem - Swiss Museum and Center of Electronic Musical Instruments and Somatic Rituals: The collective and label from Basel consists of the producers and musicians Kombé, Mafou and Mukuna and has become an important part of the innovative Swiss club scene.