The Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de Musique (Sacem) welcomes the judgment of the Tribunal judiciaire de Nanterre of June 28, 2024 in the proceedings brought against it by the heirs of Alexandre Benois and the legal successors of Maurice Ravel, seeking to have Alexandre Benois declared co-author, alongside Maurice Ravel, of the Boléro is recognized.

As the documents submitted by the plaintiffs did not prove that the criteria required for the recognition of such co-authorship were met, Sacem had in fact refused to recognize the Boléro can be regarded as a joint work between Maurice Ravel and Alexandre Benois.

Such recognition would have meant that the term of copyright protection for this work would have been extended until 2039 or even 2051 if, as later claimed by the Ravel estate, the choreographer Bronislava Nijinska was also a co-author of the Boléros would have been recognized.

The Nanterre court followed Sacem's reasoning and therefore dismissed the claims of the Ravel and Benois estates in their entirety, both with regard to Sacem's refusal to recognize Alexandre Benois' alleged co-authorship and with regard to the numerous errors that the estates were accusing him of.

In essence, according to the press release, the aim is to enable the canton to pay higher financial contributions to the Uri music school in future. According to the cantonal law on schools and education, voluntary music lessons are a joint responsibility of the canton and municipalities. The canton is responsible for supporting voluntary music lessons for primary and upper secondary school students through contributions. Following the referendum on the revision of the Education Act on September 25, 2022 and as part of the follow-up legislation, the ordinance on voluntary music lessons at elementary school is now also to be revised.

The consultation on the revised ordinance will last until September 26, 2024, after which the Directorate of Education and Culture will evaluate the comments. The cantonal government can then decide on how to proceed. The earliest possible date for consideration of the revised law in the cantonal parliament is February 5, 2025. If this timetable is adhered to, the revised ordinance could come into force on August 1, 2025.

According to the press release, the role of artistic director also includes an advisory function for the further development and repositioning of the tradition-steeped festival. Christoph Müller will take up his position in autumn 2025 and present his first program at the beginning of 2026.

Born in 1970, Christoph Müller is a trained cellist and has held various positions with the Basel Chamber Orchestra since 1996, including cellist and managing director. He has been the orchestra's artistic delegate and concert manager since 2011. After the 2025 edition of the festival, he will hand over the artistic direction of the Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy after 24 editions.

The Settimane Musicali have been part of the musical panorama of the Lake Maggiore region and Ticino since they were founded in 1946. It is a springboard for young musicians and promotes Swiss orchestras, such as the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana, which is given a special platform with two concerts a year as part of the festival.

On 1 August 2022, the federal government launched the "Young Talents in Music" funding program. The aim is to support children and young people with above-average musical potential and create uniform standards for talent development in the music sector throughout Switzerland. Participation in the program is voluntary for the cantons and is subject to minimum requirements in terms of content and structure.

The Federal Office of Culture (BAK) has approved the Canton of Basel-Landschaft's application for participation. As of 1 January 2025, all interested children and young people from Basel-Landschaft can apply to join the support program. Children and young people who are already part of the Talent Promotion Music Schools Baselland (TFBL) have the opportunity to apply for direct payments from the federal government until August 31, 2024. The application tool will be activated by the cantonal coordination office during the school summer vacations.

Daniel Hope will begin his directorship at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival 2026, the 70th edition of the festival named after its founder Yehudi Menuhin. Following an extensive, multi-stage selection process, he was unanimously elected as the new artistic director on the recommendation of the appointment committee. Hope has known Gstaad for many years and has had close personal and musical ties with festival founder Yehudi Menuhin since his childhood. His mother Eleanor Hope was Yehudi Menuhin's personal assistant.

Hope has been Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra since 2016, which also has close historical ties to the festival. He also has leadership roles at the Savannah Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Philharmonie Essen. He is currently Artistic Director of the Frauenkirche Dresden and President of the Beethoven House in Bonn.

Grace Newcombe specializes in medieval and renaissance music. She performs throughout Europe and records with renowned medieval renaissance ensembles such as Ensemble Leones, Peregrina, Le Miroir de Musique, Ensemble Gilles Binchois, SchoEnsemble Dragma and Musicke & Mirth. She is the founder and director of the medieval ensemble Rumorum. As an instrumentalist, she has performed with medieval harps and Clavicymbalum can be heard.

Grace studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where she obtained a Master's degree with distinction in Early Music Vocal Pedagogy. Since then she has taught there regularly as a guest or substitute teacher for singing, Tudor and Elizabethan vocal polyphony, medieval vocal polyphony and Gregorian chant.

As a performer and teacher, Grace specializes in non-classical vocal techniques and currently also teaches voice training at the Institut Jazz in Basel. She wrote her doctoral thesis on performance practices for vernacular songs in thirteenth-century Britain. She uncovered previously unknown melodic and textual peculiarities of Middle English verse.

Alexandra Dovgan, who according to the press release was born into a family of musicians in 2007, began her piano studies at the age of four and a half and passed the entrance exam for the Central Academic Music School in Moscow at the age of five. She has won numerous international competitions, including the Vladimir Krainev Moscow International Piano Competition. At the age of ten, she was awarded the Grand Prix at the II International Grand Piano Competition in Moscow. Alexandra has already performed in the Berlin Philharmonie, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam under conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel and Paavo Järvi.

The Prix Serdang was established in 2022 and awarded to Martin James Bartlett. Ariel Lanyi received the prize in 2023. It is endowed with 50,000 francs, is not a competition and is not tied to any conditions. Rather, it is an award, an incentive and support for a young career and an investment in artistic creation. Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder is the curator of the award.

The idea of publishing a catalog raisonné of Caroline Charrière's works arose during the cataloging work on the composer's estate between 2022 and 2023 in collaboration with the Association Caroline Charrière. Ultimately, the decisive factor for the creation of the project was the fact that over 50 additional works were found during the inventory of the estate in the Cantonal and University Library, which are not listed in the chronological list of works kept by Caroline Charrière herself (2018).

The catalog of works was also based on the catalog by musical genre compiled by the musicologist Irène Minder-Jeanneret (2021), the catalog of the music publisher Bim and the list of works in the inventory of the Caroline Charrière estate (2023). The catalog contains a total of 199 works, 40 arrangements of works by other composers, 6 miniatures composed for special occasions (birthdays and baptisms) and 40 sketches. Charrière also wrote other pieces for private use, but these are not included in the catalog as they are not intended for the public.

Caroline Charrière (1960 - 2018) was a Swiss composer and conductor. She studied flute and composition in Lausanne, Biel and Manchester and conducted the Fribourg women's choir Chœur de Jade in addition to working as a freelance composer.

More info:
https://www.fr.ch/de/kub/news/caroline-charriere-publikation-des-werkkatalogs

Born in 1974, Philippe Bach studied horn at the Bern University of Music and the Conservatoire de Genève and conducting in Zurich with Johannes Schlaefli and at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester with Sir Mark Elder. From 2006 to 2008 he was Assistant Conductor at the Teatro Real in Madrid and assistant to Jesús López Cobos. From 2008 to 2010, he was First Kapellmeister and Deputy GMD at Theater Lübeck and from 2010 to 2022 General Music Director of the Meininger Hofkapelle. He has been Chief Conductor of the Bern Chamber Orchestra since 2012 and Chief Conductor of the Kammerphilharmonie Graubünden since 2016.

Founded in 2009, the 36-member Fribourg Chamber Orchestra (FKO) performs at the Equilibre Fribourg, the Podium Düdingen and in one of the halls of the CO of the Bulle region. It can also be heard in the music theater season of the NOF - Neue Oper Fribourg and regularly accompanies the projects of numerous vocal ensembles in the region.

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.