Meret Lüthi studied in Bern with Monika Urbaniak-Lisik and Eva Zurbrügg and in Basel with Walter Levin. She continued her training on the baroque violin with Anton Steck in Trossingen. As a specialist in early music, she teaches baroque violin and historically informed performance practice at Bern University of the Arts. In 2017 she was awarded the Music Prize of the Canton of Bern and in 2020 the Culture Prize of the Bürgi-Willert Foundation.

The Brienz jury honored Meret Lüthi "for building up her internationally renowned ensemble Les Passions de l'Âme and for sharing her impressive wealth of ideas and captivating programs with the public for over 15 years". Previous recipients of a Golden Bow include Hans Heinz Schneeberger, Thomas and Patrick Demenga, Thomas Füri, Thomas Zehetmair, Tabea Zimmermann, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Kim Kashkashian. The prize, a high-quality engraved bow from Finkel Bogenwerkstätte Brienz AG, is presented at the opening concert of the Meiringen Music Festival Week.

The prerequisite for supporting the Bern Conservatory of Music (Konsibern) is that the voters of the City of Bern approve the 2024 budget on November 19, 2023. The budget also includes the funds for Konsibern. The music school's services are to be paid for with a sum of around four million francs for 2024. This includes additional costs of 166,504 francs, which are due to an increase in the number of lessons, an increase in teachers' salaries and higher rental costs.

The music school was founded in 1858 by the Bernese Music Society BMG. With the founding of the Bern University of the Arts HKB in 2000, the general music school department of the former conservatory was transformed into an independent institution and the Bern Conservatory Music School Foundation was established as a competence center for amateur music-making.

According to the foundation's press release, the personnel and organizational changes are being made in connection with a private relationship that has arisen at management level. By handing over responsibility for the External Network & International Affairs division to Benoît, Bischof will no longer report directly to his partner with immediate effect. She herself is no longer a member of the Executive Board until the end of June 2025. In the course of developing the new management structure, Bischof also informed the Board of Trustees of his wish to end his mandate on June 30, 2025.

Pro Helvetia writes that the timing of the change of director at the end of June 2025 is justified in terms of content, as the financing and implementation of the new cultural message will be secured by this time and the business can be handed over accordingly. After his time at Pro Helvetia, Philippe Bischof would like to move on to the next stage of his career and have more time for his private life. The management position will be advertised in 2024.

Under the artistic direction of Christoph Müller, the festival has developed from a pure concert festival into a versatile and multi-faceted festival, according to the press release. This also includes talent promotion and mediation. In addition to the further development of concert operations, Müller has gradually built up the Gstaad Academy with its five academies, the Gstaad Festival Orchestra, the digital offerings as part of the Gstaad Digital Festival and numerous other projects since 2008. The flagship of the Gstaad Academy is the Gstaad Conducting Academy, launched in 2014, which also awards the annual Neeme Järvi Prize.

Christoph Müller studied cello in Bern and Zurich and was a cellist in the Basel Chamber Orchestra until 2013. He was managing director and orchestra director of the Basel Chamber Orchestra until 2010. He has been Artistic Director of the Menuhin Festival Gstaad since 2002. From 2005 to 2013 he was also Artistic Director of the Interlaken Music Festival (Interlaken Classiques).

Christopher Rühle and Sabina Brunnschweiler succeed Tanja Scartazzini, who headed the Office of Culture until last August and is now working for the City of Winterthur. Rühle is already working in the office as Head of Legal Affairs and Head of the Cultural Heritage Department. Sabina Brunnschweiler currently works at the Canton of Zurich's Department of Culture as head of the promotion team.

The new heads of office will work together on overarching management tasks. However, responsibility for the individual areas of the office, which has around one hundred employees, will be divided up. According to current plans, Sabina Brunnschweiler will be responsible for cultural promotion, state archives and the cantonal library, while Christopher Rühle will be in charge of monument preservation, archaeology and cultural heritage.

Christopher Rühle, who holds a doctorate in political science, grew up in Wil, where he also lives. He has worked at the Office of Culture for 16 years, currently as Head of Legal Affairs and Head of the Cultural Heritage Department. He has completed project skills and further training in the areas of management, business administration and culture and is a long-standing member of the Office's management team and also a member of the current interim management team. Rühle is married and the father of a daughter and two sons.

Sabina Brunnschweiler grew up in Toggenburg. She studied German linguistics and literature, general history and journalism. She worked as a journalist in the canton of St.Gallen for several years and then moved to the Office for Culture for a few years, where she worked in the cultural promotion department. In 2011, she moved to the Canton of Zurich in the Culture Department. Since 2018, she has been a member of the management team and head of the funding team and the dance and theater department. She is married and the mother of two daughters.

Luginbühl's predecessor Nadine Borter will continue to chair the board until the end of 2023. As President of the Board of Trustees, she has done important stabilization work, writes the city. Under her presidency, "talks with the trade unions were steered in a constructive direction, a code of conduct was drawn up, new appointments were made to the artistic directorate and all division heads, the coronavirus pandemic was dealt with and the institution was well positioned under the new name Bühnen Bern".

Following the allegations of abuse in the dance company, Nadine Borter ensured a comprehensive investigation, internal training and the development of prevention strategies. The Foundation Board responded to the reduced performance contract with less public funding by switching to stagione operation, thus ensuring that the three stage sections and the Bern Symphony Orchestra were maintained.

Werner Luginbühl headed the Canton of Bern's Department of Justice, Communes and Churches as a member of the cantonal government from 1998 to 2008. From 2007 to 2019, he represented the Canton of Berne in the Council of States and at the same time worked for Swiss Mobiliar as Head of Public Affairs. He has been Chairman of the Swiss Federal Electricity Commission (ElCom) since March 1, 2020. In recent years, Werner Luginbühl has chaired cultural institutions in various areas.

In the Jazz, Rock, Pop category, Alina Amuri, Sibylla Giger and Belia Winnewisser will be awarded years of work (CHF 48,000 each). In the classical/new music category, the Ensemble Kiosk and Sebastian Hofmann & Martin Lorenz will receive the same amount of work years.

Brandy Butler has developed into one of the most important cultural mediators and activists in the city of Zurich in recent years, according to the city's press release. She is also "part of and the driving force behind various local and national initiatives". For example, she has been "organizing the highly acclaimed Drag Story Time" for years. She also organizes the Black Performance Lab, where queer people of colour (PoC) performers can reorient themselves. The award for special cultural merit is endowed with 20,000 francs.

Mayor Corine Mauch will present the awards totaling CHF 677,000 on Friday, November 24, 2023, at a ceremony for invited guests at Kaufleuten. The work years, work grants and awards are a key instrument of the City of Zurich for promoting the independent performing arts community.

The members of Ensemble Fokus, founded in 2022, come from all over Switzerland and Germany. They are Daniela Engel, Sarah-Maria Schmid, Pauline Zahno, Alexander Rauch and Adèle Bagein. The Loewe Quartet, an ensemble of students from the Hochschule für Musik in Zurich, unites Bastian Loewe, Livia Bechtold, Juan Carlos Escobar Ossa and Alina Isabel Morger. The Zeitgeist Trio was founded by Tim Crawford, Martin Egidi and Martin Jollet, students at the Hochschule für Musik Basel. The winner of the special Paul Juon prize donated by Myriam Gebert for the best interpretation of a work by Paul Juon is the Alas Quartet.

The Swiss Chamber Music Association is the supporting association and organizer of the Lake Constance Chamber Music Festival and, in collaboration with the Paul Juon Society, organizer of the Paul Juon Chamber Music Competition with concert placement. The newly founded Paul Juon Chamber Music Competition is aimed at young Swiss ensembles and offers the winning ensembles a three-year concert placement with substantial financial support for the concerts.

All winning ensembles not only receive prize money, but are also included in the concert program of the Swiss Chamber Music Association for three years. Concert organizers who engage winning ensembles for public concerts also receive financial support from the Förderkreis. At the same time, the Förderkreis Kammermusik Schweiz guarantees the musicians appropriate remuneration.

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Revaz successfully stood as a candidate for the Geneva SP. She previously made a name for herself during the pandemic with her commitment to coronavirus compensation. In the National Council, she wants to campaign for cultural policy issues. The Austrian-Swiss cellist performs regularly in Europe, Asia and South America and at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Verbier Festival, the International Festival of Colmar and the Pablo Casals Festival.

Revaz's choice was reported in the Luxembourg trade magazine Pizzicato and the renowned British online magazine Slipped Disc, among others.

Founded in 1983 by Swiss jazz musicians Jürg Solothurnmann, Hans Kennel, Paul Haag and Urs Blöchlinger as a "platform for innovative musicians from the Swiss-German scene", the label was taken over in 1991 by Pius Knüsel, who later became director of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. From 1996 to 2005, the renowned drummer Lucas Niggli managed Unit Records until guitarist Harald Haerter took over the reins in 2005.

After almost two decades, Harald Haerter is now handing over the reins to bassists Andreas Waelti and Luca Sisera. In recent years, both musicians have made a name for themselves as sidemen and bandleaders with a remarkably busy international concert schedule. Their artistic work has been documented in detail by numerous releases on various labels and they are well connected in the European scene.

Parts of the new, revised and corrected edition of all Shostakovich symphonies are now available. The first group of four publications spans the composer's life from his youthful Symphony No. 1 through Nos. 9 and 11 to his enigmatic farewell with No. 15.

No. 15 is to be completed by the 50th anniversary of the composer's death in 2025. The first four volumes of the edition, Nos. 1, 9, 11 and 15, are published as large-format study scores for optimum readability. All scores and the accompanying orchestral parts have been provided with new computer typesetting, and the orchestral parts are also compatible for performance with the scores in "The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich".

As the British music journalist Norman Lebrecht explains in his magazine Slipped Disk, the publishers do not specify how serious the errors were in earlier scores from the Soviet and post-Soviet era.

Recent neurological research sees dance as an ideal intervention for neurological diseases and disorders such as MS or Parkinson's disease. They emphasize the potential role of dance and music in overcoming motor barriers and improving psychosocial well-being and quality of life. The creative practice and approach of the Connect project is based on evidence-based research in the innovative field of dance and neurology. Movement offers participants the opportunity to connect with themselves and their environment. Dancing shapes and encourages balance, expression, posture and creativity.

The impetus for the collaboration came from the new ballet director of Ballett Zürich, Cathy Marston, whose ballet "The Cellist" tells the life story of Jacqueline du Pré, who suffered from MS and died at an early age. The project is a collaboration between the Tonhalle Society Zurich, Zurich Opera House, Zurich performance group The Field and the Dance & Creative Wellness Foundation.

The project is supported by the Parkinson's Society Switzerland, the MS Society Switzerland and the Neurological Clinic of the University Hospital Zurich. The kick-off and information event will take place on Friday, November 3, 2023, in the Tonhalle.

More info:
https://www.tonhalle-orchester.ch/saisonschwerpunkte/connect

Born in 1933, the German-Austrian Hatto Beyerle studied violin, composition and conducting in Freiburg i. Breisgau and Vienna. He was a co-founder of ensembles such as the Vienna Soloists, the Alban Berg Quartet and L'Ensemble. Beyerle has won numerous record prizes, including the Grand Prix du Disque and the German Record Prize. As a chamber musician, he was twice awarded the title Artist of the Year by the German Phono Academy.

From 1964 to 1987, he was a professor at the Vienna Academy of Music, before moving to the Hanover Academy of Music. From 1990 to 2004 he taught as a professor at the Music Academy of the City of Basel. Since 1998, he has regularly given master classes at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole (Florence) as well as guest courses for viola and chamber music in the USA and Canada.

Maxime Pascal is a specialist in French music of the 20th century and new music. In the field of opera, he conducted Salvatore Sciarrino's Te vedo, ti sento, mi perdo at La Scala in Milan, which he later brought to the Staatsoper Berlin. In 2021, he conducted a new production of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Thursday from light at the Philharmonie de Paris. In Geneva, he conducted Peter Eötvös' opera Sleepless.

Founded in 1911, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra (HSO) consists of around 60 musicians. In recent years, it has been conducted by Hans-Peter Frank (1980-1990), Andrew Manze (2006-2014) and, since 2014, Stefan Solyom.

Bourgue studied oboe with Etienne Baudo and chamber music with Fernand Oubradous at the Conservatoire National de Musique Paris. He won first prize for oboe at international competitions in Paris in 1958 and first prize for chamber music in 1959. He won further competitions in Geneva in 1963, Birmingham in 1965, Munich in 1967, Prague in 1968 and Budapest in 1970.

Maurice Bourgue was appointed to the Orchestre de Paris by Karl Münch in 1967, where he was principal oboist until 1979. In 1972 he founded an octet which bears his name. The octet consists of musicians from the Orchestre de Paris. As musical director of the Sandor Végh International Chamber Music Academy, he devoted himself to teaching at the music academies in Paris and Geneva and gave master classes in Budapest, London, Lausanne, Moscow, Jerusalem, Oslo and Kyoto.