Urbanski was Music Director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 2011 to 2021 and Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra from 2010 to 2017, which appointed him Honorary Guest Conductor at the end of his tenure. He was also Principal Guest Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra (2012 - 2016) and Principal Guest Conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (2015 - 2021). In November 2022 he was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana.

Krzysztof Urbański's contract begins in summer 2024 and is initially valid for three years. At least six double subscription concerts are planned per season. In the season now beginning, Krzysztof Urbański will perform the 10th symphony concert of Mussorgsky's Picture Worlds with the Japanese-German pianist Alice Sara Ott on May 30 and 31, 2024 in the Casino.

The Villa Senar of the Russian musician Serge Rachmaninoff lends itself to established and new types of events, writes the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Concerts, musical Sunday brunches, jazz evenings, residencies or concert walks - as well as virtual tours that convey Rachmaninoff's work - are all part of the concept. The first formats are already being implemented. Sound installations that use nature as a source of inspiration are also possible.

"Sergei Rachmaninoff was also inspired by the idyllic nature of the peninsula for his works," says Andrea Loetscher, Managing and Artistic Director of the Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation. "We want to reflect Rachmaninoff's connection with the peninsula and make this magical place accessible through art and culture."

From summer 2024, the first offers are to be implemented and thus develop the Hertenstein peninsula into a "sustainable recreational area for residents, culture and nature enthusiasts".

More info:
https://www.hslu.ch/de-ch/hochschule-luzern/ueber-uns/medien/medienmitteilungen/2023/08/24/zwischenbericht-inseltraeume

The Office of Culture has existed in its current organizational form for around 20 years, writes the canton. Barbara Gabrielli has played a key role in its development and establishment over the past 15 years as head of the office. Her decision to leave the office at the end of July 2024 was "well-considered and at the right time for her".

Gabrielli's major achievements include, for example, a cultural promotion concept, a film promotion model and measures in the area of language promotion. In particular, she has driven forward digitization at the Office. Among other things, she developed a museum platform and a portal for audiovisual cultural assets and enabled the digital recording of collections and archaeological sites. It has also initiated the creation of an archive for building culture.

The canton added that the government very much regretted Barbara Gabrielli's decision to leave. The position of Head of Office will be advertised.

Guillem Palomar was born in Barcelona in 1997 and currently lives in Berlin. He studied composition with Jörg Widmann, electroacoustics with Gilbert Nouno and conducting with Michael Wendeberg. In 2021 he took part in the Lucerne Composer Seminar. His works have been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, the West Eastern Divan Orchestra and the Boulez Ensemble and conducted by conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Michael Volle and Ben Goldscheider. Palomar has also been teaching at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin and at the Ra'anana Music Center in Israel since 2021.

Jakob Raab, also born in 1997, comes from Saarbrücken. He studied composition with Theo Brandmüller and Arnulf Herrmann and also with Wolfgang Rihm at the Karlsruhe University of Music, as well as completing a bachelor's degree in music theory and piano. He has been studying music theory with Felix Diergarten in Freiburg since 2020 and mathematics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology since 2019. Works by Jakob Raab have already been premiered as part of the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA).

The Roche Young Commissions were launched in 2013 as a collaboration between Roche, the Lucerne Festival and the Lucerne Festival Academy. They give those selected the opportunity to write works for orchestra. Applications are possible up to the age of 30 via an open call. The works will be premiered by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) as part of the Summer Festival 2025.

The composer and jazz trombonist Nils Wogram was born in Braunschweig in 1972. He studied in New York and at the Cologne University of Music. He founded his own label NWOG Records in 2010. He has been a lecturer in jazz studies at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts since 2004. He was awarded a Swiss Music Prize in 2021.

The Moselle Music Festival is an annual international music festival in the Moselle region. The concerts take place in Bernkastel-Kues, as well as in cities such as Trier and Koblenz. The program focuses on chamber music as well as classical, romantic and modern orchestral music, baroque and vocal concerts. Artists from the fields of jazz, swing and chanson also have a home at the Moselle Music Festival. The JTI Trier Jazz Award is endowed with 10,000 euros.

The bodies of people who suffer from diabetes produce no or too little insulin. People with diabetes are therefore dependent on an external supply of the messenger substance via syringe or pump. Researchers led by Martin Fussenegger from the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel want to make life easier for these people and are looking for solutions to produce and administer insulin directly in the body.

To this end, the team is pursuing the idea of enclosing insulin-producing designer cells in capsules that can be implanted in the body. In order to be able to externally control when and how much of the messenger substance the cells release into the blood, the team has researched and applied various triggers in recent years: Light, temperature or electric fields.

Fussenegger and his colleagues have now developed another novel stimulation method: they use music to trigger the release of insulin by the cells within minutes. This works particularly well with "We will rock you", a worldwide hit by the British rock band Queen.

More info:
https://ethz.ch/de/news-und-veranstaltungen/eth-news/news/2023/08/zellen-mit-musikgehoer-geben-insulin-ab.html

Over the past three weeks, ten up-and-coming conductors have had the opportunity to work with the Gstaad Festival Orchestra and the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra as part of the Gstaad Conducting Academy. Under the direction of Jaap van Zweden, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Principal Guest Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and Johannes Schlaefli, Professor of Conducting at the Zurich University of the Arts, they led numerous rehearsals and concerts.

At the final concert, three of this year's ten participants were awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize: Chinese conductor Yukuang Jin will conduct as a guest conductor with the Philharmonie Südwestfalen in an upcoming season. Anna Sułkowska-Migoń will be invited to conduct the Bern Symphony Orchestra, Musikkollegium Winterthur and Sinfonie Orchester Biel Solothurn thanks to her win. The German conductor Aurel Dawidiuk wins a guest conducting position with the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne and the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra.

The jury for the Neeme Järvi Prize 2023 was made up of the Chairman Christoph Müller (Artistic Director Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy), the professors of the Gstaad Conducting Academy Jaap van Zweden and Johannes Schlaefli, two representatives of the Gstaad Festival Orchestra (Vlad Stančuleasa, concertmaster and Polina Peskina, 1st flute), as well as representatives of the partner orchestras.

Born in 1960, Florence Malgoire was the daughter of Jean-Claude Malgoire, the founder and director of the baroque ensemble La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy. She studied at the Courneuve Conservatory and with Sigiswald Kuijken and played in numerous renowned ensembles such as Philippe Herrewegh's La Chapelle Royale, William Christie's Les Arts Florissants and Marc Minkowski's Les Musiciens du Louvre. She has performed as a soloist with Les Arts Florissants and the Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy.

Since 2000, she has taught baroque violin and chamber music at the Haute Ecole de Musique Geneva. She has also appeared as conductor of the baroque orchestra L'orchestre baroque du Leman. In 2008 she was invited by William Christie to help set up a department for historical performance practice at the Julliard School.

Hanna Walsdorf has been Assistant Professor of Musicology in Basel since 2022. In the project "The Night Side of Music", she will investigate how the segmented sleep cycle shaped the history of music in the early modern period between 1500 and 1800. She will look at religious music-making at home and musical practice in monastic daily routines, as well as night-time concerts and private musical events. Finally, she also asks how the time between sunset and sunrise was reflected in the music itself. Walsdorf's aim with this research is to contribute to a reassessment of musical behavior and repertoire.

With the SNSF Advanced Grants, the SNSF supports outstanding scientists in Switzerland who take unconventional approaches to gain new insights. The approved projects are each funded with more than two million francs over a period of five years.

The SNSF Advanced Grants were launched in 2021 to provide researchers at Swiss institutions with a replacement for the ERC Advanced Grants, for which they cannot currently apply, as Switzerland is now only considered a non-associated third country in the EU research program "Horizon Europe".

Originally from Turkey, Cansu Tanrıkulu studied in Berlin and has since worked regularly with renowned representatives of international contemporary jazz, including musicians such as Liz Kosack, Korhan Erel, Jim Black, William Parker and Nick Dunston. Tanrıkulu's work is "not only firmly rooted in the jazz tradition, but also highly topical", writes the HKB.

Originally from Bulgaria, Biliana Voutchkova is a performer, composer and violinist who is equally at home in real-time music, various forms of improvised music and contemporary classical music. She has worked extensively with visual arts, theater and dance and performs with long-standing projects such as her solo project Jane in Ether (with Miako Klein and Magda Mayas), the Splitter Orchestra and as a duo with clarinettist Michael Thieke.

The two will take up their posts at the BUA next September.

According to the Basel-Stadt cantonal press release, platforms that provide services for youth and alternative culture in close proximity to the scene and at low cost can also submit applications. Following the pilot project in 2022, the research grants will be used to realize another key concern of cultural professionals. Both calls for proposals will be financed from the cultural lump sum, which was increased by the Grand Council in June.

The tipping initiative approved by the people demands that at least five percent of the canton's regular cultural budget - symbolically: the tip - should flow into Basel's youth and alternative culture every year. An important concern of the cultural scene is being met with the call for proposals launched today for non-commercial exhibition and project spaces in Basel: they can now apply for funding of between 10,000 and 50,000 francs for their programs, for a maximum of three years. The prerequisite is that they are also financed by third-party funds.

More info:
Canton of Basel-Stadt and City of Basel - New funding vehicles for a strong Basel youth and alternative culture

Suisseculture notes the submission of the 200-franc-is-enough initiative "with unease". Although the Swiss voted down the No Billag initiative by 71.6 percent just five years ago, this is already the next attack on media diversity, writes the association.

Swiss radio and television are an important and necessary forum for cultural creation in all sectors. Art and culture are dependent on independent media, "independent of the dominance of market mechanisms". In order to reflect the diversity of Switzerland and its cultural activities, a breadth is needed that only the SRG media can offer with its mission for society and its cohesion.

The whole statement:
https://www.suisseculture.ch/?article=brandgefaehrliche_no_billag_2_initiative_eingereicht

Nowak is Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. From 2017 to 2020 he was Music Director of the Polish National Opera in Warsaw. He was the winner of the Ernest Ansermet Conducting Competition in Geneva and received the European Music Prize for the European Musician of the Year, awarded by a commission chaired by Pierre Boulez. He has held conducting positions with several orchestras in Switzerland.

The Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1973 as the CCP Philharmonic Orchestra. It has also performed with artists such as Van Cliburn and Renata Tebaldi. It toured Europe in 2001.

Hankyeol Yoon was awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize in 2019 as the youngest winner of the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and received invitations from the Basel Chamber Orchestra and the symphony orchestras in Basel and Bern. In 2022/23, he made his debut with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and the Busan Philharmonic Orchestra and assisted Simon Rattle on a European tour of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

He was engaged as assistant conductor at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and worked as a scholarship holder under Daniel Harding and Thomas Adès. He has also received awards as a composer. He was a member of the mentoring program of the Eötvös Foundation for Contemporary Music in Budapest and was artistically supervised by George Benjamin, while Peter Eötvös performed his compositions. He made his debut as a conductor and composer under Unsuk Chin at the Tongyeong International Music Festival. His most recent work Grande Hipab was premiered by Ensemble Modern in 2021.

With regard to "open houses", Theater Basel and the Nationaltheater Mannheim are in the lead with three mentions each. Theater Basel is praised for taking the Open Foyer seriously.

The opera premiere "Berlin Alexanderplatz" at the Theater Bielefeld and the multi-genre project "vendetta, vendetta" at the Staatstheater Nürnberg win with two mentions each. In terms of stage/costume/video/sound, the Zurich Schauspielhaus is in the lead with six nominations.

The inglorious winner of the question of the greatest moment of excitement is, unsurprisingly, the feces attack by the now suspended head of the Hanover State Ballet against a dance critic.

More info: https://www.die-deutsche-buehne.de/leseprobe/saisonbilanz-2022-23/