Born in Perth, Australia, in 1966, Liza Lim last appeared at the Lucerne Festival in November 2023 with the world premiere of her work Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time present. She is Professor of Composition and holds the first Sculthorpe Chair in Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she also directs the Composing Women program.

Roche Commissions is a collaboration between Roche, the Lucerne Festival and the Lucerne Festival Academy. Since 2003, Roche has commissioned a new work by a contemporary composer every two years on the recommendation of the Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy. The aim of the commissions is to enable musical works that "go beyond the conventional and offer a source of intellectual stimulation and challenge".

On Facebook, Kauer explains that she booked a seat for her instrument for the transportation of hand luggage (CBBG, extra seat for cabin baggage), only to be told 30 hours later via three emails that her cello was no longer welcome. She was advised to call customer service, where on the third attempt she was "kept on hold for half an hour by an incredibly rude employee" who finally told her that there were no more seats available.

According to Kauer, the customer service employee gave no explanations, only "incredibly hostile and condescending remarks" such as: It wasn't his problem and that she should call back later when she had decided whether or not to cancel her booking. The story was picked up by the trade magazine "The Strad".

Article in The Strad:
https://www.thestrad.com/news/swiss-air-if-you-dont-want-cellos-on-board-just-say-so-tar-cellist-suffers-flight-woes/18516.article

Self-taught Biel musician, composer and singer with Brazilian roots Caroline Alves has developed her own sound, a mixture of electropop, soul and jazz. Following the release of her first album "Moonlight", she won the "Best Talent" award at the 2021 Swiss Music Awards. She has performed on numerous stages, including at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Gurtenfestival and in summer 2023 as the support act for the band Coldplay at Zurich's Letzigrund stadium. Over the next two years, she will be devoting herself to completing and promoting her second album.

Mor Dovrat (stage art), Céline Ducrot (visual arts), Simon Beuret (comics) and Philippe Wicht (stage art and music) also receive support. The aim is to support promising professional artists at crucial moments in their careers. Support is provided in the form of two-year performance contracts. During this time, the artists receive a grant of between CHF 20,000 and CHF 40,000 to enable them to devote themselves to their artistic work.

Three sub-studies of the project take a differentiated look at the effects of digitization on cultural creation and cultural promotion. They show where there is room for manoeuvre to shape digitalization in the cultural sector in such a way that it strengthens cultural diversity, creates easily accessible new spaces for reflection and thus promotes cultural participation for as many people as possible.

Many artists are ambivalent about using digital applications: although they can be helpful in the creative phase as well as in communication and marketing, these advantages only come with additional time, financial and emotional investment, often borne by the artists themselves. The Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) presents this ambivalence with fictitious but realistic artist personas. Its comprehensive examination of the social, economic, political and legal effects of digitalization on the art forms of music, theater and visual design is based on literature research as well as several qualitative surveys and focus group workshops with artists.

The qualitative analysis is supplemented by the quantitative study of the Swiss Music Council (SMR), which sheds light on the specific effects of digitization in the music sector and uses two surveys to determine how the Swiss music industry is affected by current digital developments, how it perceives them and how it deals with them.

More info:
https://www.hslu.ch/de-ch/hochschule-luzern/ueber-uns/medien/medienmitteilungen/2024/08/27/kultur-und-digitalisierung/

Sixteen-year-old Corina Deng from Canada was awarded the first prize of 5000 francs. Viktor Vasilev from Bulgaria came second (CHF 2000) and Qingyuan Yang from China/UK came third (CHF 1000).

Deng received three further awards: the Audience Award, the Calma Management Award and the prize for the best interpretation of the competition's commissioned work, Onde-Punti-Voci for solo violin and string orchestra by the Serbian-Canadian composer Ana Sokolović.

The 2024 jury consisted of Pavel Vernikov (President), Marie-Claude Chappuis (Switzerland), Mario Hossen (Bulgaria-Austria), Alexandre Vinnitski (Finland), Eduard Wulfson (Germany) and Ana Sokolović (Serbia/Canada), who joined the jury in the second round.

Christian Brantschen, born in Bern in 1959, is a musician and composer. He has been a permanent member of Patent Ochsner since 2000 and has played over 500 concerts with the band in Switzerland and abroad. He regularly accompanies Swiss authors and went on an extensive tour of Switzerland with Pedro Lenz with the program "Der Goalie bin ig". He composes music for the theater as well as for numerous cinema and documentary films and crime scenes.

The Bürgi-Willert Foundation Culture Prize has been awarded every two years since 1992 and, since 2015, to artists between the ages of 40 and 65 who have enriched Bern's cultural life for years but who, due to their age, are generally no longer eligible for grants and funding from the public sector and other foundations.

Choral singing has a long tradition in Appenzell Ausserrhoden and encourages a broad public to engage in cultural activities, writes the canton. Individual professional musicians such as Jürg Surber, the long-standing conductor of the Chorwald, are often able to motivate choirs with their enthusiasm and expertise. This year's cantonal recognition award is therefore also representative of the great commitment shown by other choirs in the canton.

Formed in 1983 as the "Gemischter Chor Wald AR" from a merger between the men's choir founded in 1879 and the women's and daughters' choir founded in 1904, the Chorwald is now a regional choir with over 60 active members from all the surrounding villages. With its specially designed concert programs and national and international appearances, the choir has made a name for itself far beyond the Appenzell region. It has won awards at various competitions and singing festivals.

Despite changing line-ups, the choir has developed a broad foundation on which a high level of stylistic diversity is possible: this is reflected in many performances, from village serenades with traditional folk songs from different cultures to church service performances and concert performances of great classical oratorios. According to the canton, the 2024 Recognition Award recognizes the choir "both for the important contribution that the singers make to cultural life in the canton with their voluntary commitment, as well as for its meticulous sound culture and innovative concert programmes".

The 2024 Culture Prize goes to choreographer and dancer Gisa Frank.

Carol Schuler was born in Winterthur in 1987. At the age of 14, she played the lead role in the film "Lieber Brad", for which she received the Swiss Film Award for Best Actress in 2002. After finishing school in Winterthur, Carol Schuler went to Berlin and began training as an actress at the European Theater Institute. This was followed by another nomination for the Swiss Film Award in 2012 and engagements at the Schauspielhaus Zürich and the Schaubühne Berlin, where she has been a permanent member of the ensemble since the 2017/18 season. Carol Schuler also performs on stage as a singer with her bands "El Cartel" and "Chloé et les Enfants Terribles". She is known to the general public as investigator Tessa Ott in Zurich's "Tatort".

The Cultural Prize of the City of Winterthur is awarded annually by the City Council to individuals or institutions who have made a special contribution to the cultural life of the City of Winterthur. The City Council nominates the award winners on its own authority. An application is not possible. Institutions as well as individuals and groups can be honored. The prize is endowed with CHF 10,000.

Leo McFall has been Chief Conductor of the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra since the 2020/21 season. Last season, he conducted four concerts with the SOV in Feldkirch and Bregenz, as well as the Bregenz Festival Opera Studio for the first time. McFall is also Principal Conductor of the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra and is closely associated with the Alma Mahler Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble of members of top European orchestras. Since this season, he has been General Music Director of the Wiesbaden State Theater.

The Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1984 by a group of musicians and music enthusiasts from the region between the Arlberg and the Rhine. Its members are 120 professional musicians from Vorarlberg and the neighboring regions. Each season, it performs a cycle of six concerts in Bregenz and Feldkirch, plus a major opera production at the Vorarlberg State Theatre, concerts and scenic projects at the international Bregenz Festival in summer, at the Montforter Zwischentöne festival, other guest performances and CD productions.

Singapore-born Kate Liu completed her training with Robert McDonald and Yoheved Kaplinsky at the Juilliard School in New York, among others. She won a bronze medal and the audience prize at the 2015 Chopin Competition in Warsaw. With the Gstaad award, Kate Liu follows Pallavi Mahidhara (prizewinner 2022) and Alexandra Dovgan (prizewinner 2023).

The prize, established by Olivier Berggruen, includes a concert as part of the festival program and a trophy designed by Mai-Thu Perret, a Geneva-born artist with French-Vietnamese roots. The German-American art historian, curator and writer Berggruen comes from a family of patrons and is artistic advisor to the Gstaad Menuhin Festival.

Steve Davislim began his musical training as a horn player and later studied singing with Dame Joan Hammond, Gösta Winbergh and Neil Shicoff as well as in Irwin Gage's lied class and at the International Opera Studio Zurich.

From 1994 to 2000, he sang roles such as Count Almaviva (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Steuermann (Der fliegende Holländer), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte), Ferrando (Cosi fan tutti), Camille (Die lustige Witwe) and Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) as well as the Prince in Heinz Holliger's "Schneewittchen" at the Zurich Opera House.

Over the past two weeks, ten conductors have had the opportunity to work with the Gstaad Festival Orchestra as part of the Gstaad Conducting Academy. Under the direction of Jaap van Zweden, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic 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 them were awarded the Neeme Järvi Prize: The Israeli conductor Omer Ein Zvi will conduct the Bern Symphony Orchestra as a guest conductor in the coming season. Thanks to her win, Alizé Léhon will be invited to conduct the Musikkollegium Winterthur and the Basel Symphony Orchestra. The Swiss conductor Gabriel Pernet wins guest conducting engagements with the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne.

The jury 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, as well as members of the partner orchestras and the Gstaad Festival Orchestra.

Raphael Sbrzesny was born in 1985 and lives and works in Berlin. He studied contemporary music, classical percussion and chamber music in Stuttgart and Paris, experimental music theater and composition in Bern as well as visual arts and theory in Stuttgart and Munich.

Sbrzesny develops installations in which portable sculptures are activated as musical instruments in performances and combined with costumes, texts, videos and photographs. In his artistic practice, he is interested in the body as an instrument and setting for a subjective historiography. According to the university, the idea of the emancipated interpreter is central to him, who structures his own works using figures such as the Eumel, King, Son, Doctor, Sophie or Principal Boy and repeatedly performs them anew.

According to the press release, the MA Music and Scene in Transformation (MuST) "completely rethinks teaching and learning in the field of music and performance": MuST places "creation and collaboration at the center of education and breaks down disciplinary and genre boundaries with its unique anchoring in the performance practice of early music (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis) as well as contemporary music (sonic space basel)".

Álvaro Rodríguez Cabezas studied in Getafe and at the Hochschule für Musik-Musik Akademie Basel under the direction of Marcus Weiss. He has taken part in important national and international festivals, including the Classic Winds in Hamburg and the Facyl Festival in Salamanca. He is a member of the A-Delta Trio and the ensemble Prochain Arrêt, with whom he recently recorded an album of music by Mozart.

The Marianne and Curt Dienemann Foundation organizes the annual Dienemann Music Competition. It is open to the public - including Swiss music academies - and focuses on one instrument or group of instruments. The audition or audition in front of the jury takes place in Lucerne. Awards - work years and sponsorship prizes - up to a maximum of CHF 10,000 per person are presented.

Born in Switzerland in 1997, Elmar Hauser switched from tenor to countertenor during his preliminary studies at the Winterthur Conservatory with David Thorner and Jane Thorner-Mengedoht. In 2021, he completed his Bachelor's degree in singing at the Zurich University of the Arts in Werner Güra's class with distinction. This was followed by a master's degree in music theater/opera singing at the Theaterakademie August Everding in the singing class of Christiane Iven.

Launched in 2015, the Concorso Lirico Internazionale di Portofino (CLIP) is a project organized by the Associazione Musicale Giovanni Bottesini. The jury president is Dominique Meyer, the other jury members are representatives of major opera houses. The first prize is endowed with 10,000 euros.