Vsevolod Zavidov was born in Moscow in 2005 and began his musical education at the age of four. Since autumn 2023, he has been studying with Nelson Goerner at the Haute école de musique de Genève, where he is completing a Master's degree in Specialized Musical Performance for Soloists.

The Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes is a joint initiative of the Lucerne Festival, the Conference of Swiss Music Universities (KMHS) and UBS. Each music academy was able to nominate a maximum of two candidates for the semi-final, which took place at the end of October at the Bern University of the Arts. In addition to Valentin Gloor and Michael Haefliger, the jury included the cellist and former winner of the Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes Sol Gabetta as well as Xavier Dayer (Zurich University of the Arts, Director of the Department of Music), Rico Gubler (Bern University of the Arts, Head of Music) and Noémie Robidas (Haute École de Musique Vaud Valais Fribourg, Directrice Générale), who represented the Swiss music academies.

Leonidas Kavakos has been giving regular violin masterclasses at the Basel School of Music for many years. Born in Athens in 1967, he began playing the violin at the age of five. He studied with Stelios Kafantaris at the conservatory in his home town and with Josef Gingold at Indiana University. In 1985, Kavakos won the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki, and in 1988 he won the Naumburg Violin Competition in New York and the Premio Paganini in Genoa. In 1991, he received the Gramophone Concerto of the Year Award for his world premiere recording of the Sibelius Concerto in the original version, which had long been considered unplayable.

During a trial run from January 2025, the Klangwelt Foundation will test the premises and processes, such as the parallel use of all rooms and the ticket system. If necessary, experts will adjust the acoustics of the rooms, according to the canton's press release. The building will officially open in May 2025 at a total cost of 23.3 million Swiss francs. Klangwelt Toggenburg is financing CHF 1 million of this. The remaining costs for the canton amount to CHF 22.3 million. The Klangwelt Toggenburg Foundation is the operator of the Klanghaus.

The wooden building comprises four acoustically unique sound rooms. There are also two outdoor stages for outdoor music experiments. As a sound workshop with unique acoustics, the Klanghaus is available to both professional musicians and amateurs for rehearsals, courses, workshops and symposia.

After studying recorder, piano and double bass, Joubert-Caillet studied viola da gamba with Paolo Pandolfo at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where he also studied baroque improvisation with Rudolf Lutz. He was awarded first prize and the audience prize at the international chamber music competition in Bruges. After teaching at the Conservatoire de Nancy and the Musikschule Konservatorium Bern, he holds the position of lecturer for viola da gamba at the Conservatoire de la Ville de Luxembourg.

François Joubert-Caillet has been director of the ensemble L'Acheron since 2009, with which he performs in various formations, with a focus on the viol consort. His CDs have been released by Ricercar-Outhere, and the complete recording of Marin Marais' Pièces de Viole was awarded a Diapason d'Or, a Choc de Classica and an Echo Klassik. Joubert-Caillet also founded Albus Fair Editions in 2021, an "independent, fair and environmentally friendly publishing house", with which he published his first work for viola da gamba and electronics, Isola.

The Merel Quartet (Mary Ellen Woodside violin, Edouard Mätzener violin, Alessandro D'Amico viola, Rafael Rosenfeld cello) will officially receive the award on July 4, 2025 as part of the opening concert of the Meiringen Music Festival Week. Founded over 15 years ago, the ensemble "inspires with its dynamic, precise and expressive musicality", writes the violin making school. It is appreciated internationally for its "lively interpretations and stylistic versatility". It combines tradition and innovation at the highest level.

Since 2000, the foundation has honored Violin making school Brienz renowned musical personalities for outstanding achievements. The "Golden Bow" is a symbol of the connection between music and violin making and is presented at the opening concert of the Meiringen Music Festival presented to the winner. The prize consists of a high-quality engraved and gold-mounted bow from Finkel Bogenwerkstätte Brienz AG.

Mayor and Senator for Culture Andreas Bovenschulte praised Järvi as the person responsible for traditional events such as the Summer in Lesmona and participative formats such as the district opera in Osterholz-Tenever or the Zukunftslabor, an orchestra focused on cultural participation and music promotion for young people.

Paavo Järvi studied percussion and conducting in his home town of Tallinn and conducting with Leonard Bernstein in Los Angeles. In 2001 he became chief conductor in Cincinnati. He works as a guest conductor with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Staatskapelle Dresden and the New York Philharmonic. Paavo Järvi also co-founded the Conductors' Academy in Zurich, the winner of which is invited to the Järvi Academy, which he founded with his father Neeme Järvi.

According to the canton, the Music School Act will safeguard and promote the range of music schools in the canton of Schwyz and create more efficient structures and uniform conditions. The associated ordinance describes the minimum musical offer that music schools must guarantee. In addition to offering a basic musical education, the minimum offer includes a minimum teaching time of 30 minutes for individual lessons, ensemble lessons, one public performance per year and certain instrumental and vocal subjects. These are the most common instruments, which can also be offered in cooperation with other music schools.

The law also regulates the accreditation procedure and the accreditation body, the most important key points for the employment of music school teachers and the salary categories. Finally, the ordinance makes statements on the promotion of talent and the creation of the cantonal concept for the promotion of talent. Anyone who is classified as talented must attend a recognized support programme in order to receive funding. The canton must present a talent promotion concept so that federal funding can be triggered. It is planned to draw this up in close cooperation with the Association of Music Schools in the Canton of Schwyz (VMSZ), which already has experience in promoting talent.

More info:
https://www.sz.ch/kanton/medien-und-datenschutz/medienmitteilungen.html/8756-8757-8803-10391-10392/news/22055

The seven-member jury praised Skal "for the outstanding film music, which impresses with its high musicality and creative depth". Mirjam Skal shows "a great flair for lending the film an additional dimension through a very striking, idiosyncratic sound concept that tastefully marries traditional orchestral instruments with electronic sounds". Her composition achieves a skillful balance between tension, dynamics and emotion through catchy themes and the multi-layered sound design. The award ceremony took place as part of the Televisionale Film and Series Festival Baden-Baden.

Mirjam Skal was born in 1996 and lives in Zurich. She received her Master's degree in Composition for Film, Theater and Media from the Zurich University of the Arts in 2022 and works as a freelance composer. In 2018, she won the Taurus Award for best music in an animated film. As Vice President of the Forum Filmmusik and part of the advisory board of the Sonart association, she represents the Swiss film music industry.

The Rolf Hans Müller Award for Film Music has been honoring young talent for outstanding film music since 1992. The prize, which is organized by Südwestrundfunk, is sponsored in equal parts by the Rolf Hans Müller Foundation Baden-Baden and the MFG Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, both figures exceed those of 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic, and are even new highs since 2011. At 16.3 billion, the gross value added of the cultural sector is also higher than before the pandemic. However, cultural enterprises are tending to become smaller and smaller: the number of employees and full-time equivalents per company are falling in a multi-year comparison. These are some of the results of the cultural industries statistics from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

In 2022, the cultural sector comprised 67,313 companies and 69,729 workplaces (branches). Compared to the economy as a whole, the cultural sector accounted for around 10.6% of companies and 9.8% of workplaces. The vast majority of cultural enterprises (around 99%) have only one workplace.

The voice connects people all over the world, writes the Landesmusikrat Schleswig-Holstein. It transcends cultural, linguistic and geographical boundaries and creates a common basis for communication and mutual understanding. And it is at home in almost every musical genre the world has to offer.

The Instrument of the Year has been chosen by the state music councils since 2008 and is the focus of attention for twelve months. Each federal state appoints its own patrons and has its own approach to achieving the transnational goal: To draw curiosity and attention to the many facets of the respective instrument.

The research team conducted the study online in collaboration with the Kentler International Drawing Space (Brooklyn, New York, USA). The starting point was the exhibition "Music as Image and Metaphor". This shows 41 drawings from Kentler's collection, accompanied by pieces of music that were specially composed to match the pictures. A member of the board of trustees had noticed that visitors were spending more time in the exhibition than usual. He wondered whether the musical accompaniment could be the reason for this and approached the then MPIEA researcher Lauren Fink with the suggestion of an accompanying scientific study.

The research team expanded the approach to include the question of whether the deliberately chosen combination of music and image has a particular influence on the aesthetic experience or whether a random pairing could also achieve similar effects. The more than 200 study participants were presented with 16 works in different modalities. These included pure pieces of music, images without musical accompaniment, intended audiovisual pairings and random audiovisual pairings. The respective viewing time served as an indicator of aesthetic interest. In addition, the test subjects were asked to report on their subjective experience after each work, such as the feeling of being moved.

Original article:
https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/newsroom/news/news-artikel/article/laesst-uns-musik-kunst-anders-wahrnehmen.html

According to the University of Hamburg, a wealth of previously unexploited sources (especially unprinted and archival holdings) are to be tapped. The personal findings will be incorporated into the online lexicon of persecuted musicians of the Nazi era (LexM), which is freely accessible via the University of Hamburg website. It will be integrated into the new research project "Nazi Persecution and Music History".

The geographical data contained in the LexM forms the basis for a planned digital cartography to enable spatio-temporal analyses of the persecution of musicians. Maps can be used to illustrate the geographical distribution of individual professional groups in exile and to trace the spread of musical knowledge or certain schools of interpretation. Artistic-scientific formats are also planned, for example in the form of research concerts, which will make the research findings accessible to a wider public.

The long-term project of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg, which is being carried out in cooperation with the University of Hamburg and the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, is part of the academy program and will begin its work on January 1, 2025.

More info:
https://www.awhamburg.de/forschung/langzeitvorhaben/ns-verfolgung-und-musikgeschichte.html

The Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan has been General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera since September 2020. He began his career as Kapellmeister at the German Stadttheater Ulm and the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. From 2001 to 2004, he was Chief Conductor of the Graz Opera and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra, from 2009 to 2021 Musical Director of the Opéra national de Paris and from 2014 to 2020 Chief Conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

The Orchestre National de France (together with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the choir and the Maîtrise) is an orchestra of the public broadcaster Radio France. The ONF works closely with the stations of Radio France, in particular France Musique.

Born in 1972, Michael Kinzer has been Head of the City of Lausanne's Culture Department since 2017 and is Co-President of the Cities Conference on Culture. According to the Pro Helvetia press release, his CV is characterized by a variety of different positions in the cultural sector, both in artistic direction and management.

He began his career in programming at the Fri-Son concert hall in Fribourg. He then worked as general event coordinator for Expo.02 and co-director of the Cargo project at the Arteplage in Neuchâtel. He then took over the administrative and later the general management of a foundation that includes the Théâtre Populaire Romand as well as the music hall and the L'heure bleue theater in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

From 2009 to 2015, he directed the Festival de la Cité in Lausanne. He has also served on numerous juries and cultural commissions at regional and national level, including as chairman of the Federal Jury for Music.

Many ancient cultures used musical instruments for ritual ceremonies. The Aztec communities of the pre-Columbian period in Central America had a rich mythology that was celebrated in rituals and sacrificial ceremonies. Visual and sound elements symbolized mythological beings from the Aztec underworld. The Aztec death pipe with its skull-shaped body seems to represent the Aztec ruler of the underworld and its scream-like sound could have prepared the human sacrifices for their descent into the underworld of Mictlan.

In order to understand the physical mechanisms behind the shrill, screeching whistling sound, a team of researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) led by Sascha Frühholz, Professor of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, has created digital 3D reconstructions of original Aztec death whistles from the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. These models show a unique internal construction with two opposing sound chambers that generate air turbulence and thus the shrill sound.

Original article:
https://www.news.uzh.ch/de/articles/media/2024/Totenkopfpfeiffe.html