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

Plamena Nikitassovas artistic focus is the study of the violin repertoire of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods, with the aim of performing works from the 17th to 19th centuries by exploring the theoretical source material and the technical characteristics of the period.

In addition to her busy concert schedule as a soloist and chamber musician, Plamena Nikitassova was concertmaster of the Johann Sebastian Bach Foundation in St. Gallen from 2013 to 2017. In 2020, she also founded the chamber music series in Basel In the course of time.

Plamena Nikitassova, born in Varna, Bulgaria, began playing the violin at the age of five and was awarded a scholarship at the age of 16, which took her to Switzerland to study music. She studied classical violin at the Geneva University of Music and at the Vienna University of Music. After meeting the violinist Jaap Schröder (Amsterdam), Nikitassova turned to early music and completed her studies in Renaissance and Baroque violin with Chiara Banchini at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 2005.

Chorwald is the second winner of the Ausserrhoden Recognition Award. According to the canton, choral singing has a long tradition in Appenzell Ausserrhoden and encourages a broad public to engage in cultural activities. 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.

Founded in 1983 as 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.

The performer and choreographer Gisa Frank received the Culture Prize, which is endowed with 25,000 francs. She was born in 1960 and grew up in southern Germany and on Lake Constance in Thurgau. She has lived in Rehetobel since 1988. Gisa Frank, trained in contemporary dance, performative forms of movement and bodywork, has been active in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden for more than twenty years.

German mezzo-soprano Janina Schweitzer has won the Grand Prix Opéra and the Audience Prize at the Concours International d'Art Vocal George Enesco in Paris, according to a statement from the HKB. The international George Enescu competition was founded in Bucharest in 1958 - but the singing section disappeared from the program in 2002. This pure singing competition was therefore re-established in Paris in 2014.

French soprano Iris Keller has won first prize in the singing category of the Concours International Leopold Bellan. In the competition, participants work on a free program that includes melodies, songs and operas.

Janina Schweitzer and Iris Keller are both studying for a Master's in Specialized Music Performance - Opera at the HKB and will be performing at 7.30 pm on 13 and 14 January 2025 as part of the Playtime Festival at Volkshaus Biel. Scenes from various operas will be shown on the theme of "generational conflicts".

According to the study, the results of two AI systems are rated significantly worse aesthetically than human solutions. The research group led by Reinhard Kopiez is critical of the current public debate about the musical and creative potential of AI and sees a tendency to overestimate it.

The Hanover-based music psychologists selected the opening bars of a melody from a largely unknown piece of music in the style of film music as the stimulus. Based on a melody continuation paradigm, a total of 111 compositions were created using ChatGPT and Google Magenta Studio. Music students generated a total of 57 continuation variants.

In a randomized blind test, 71 participants with above-average musical experience rated the aesthetic qualities of the melodies. The results astonished the music psychologists: The human solutions were rated significantly better than the AI versions on all scales, with the older Google Magenta Studio system still lagging behind ChatGPT.

Original article:
Schreiber, A., Sander, K., Kopiez, R., & Thöne, R. (2024). The creative performance of the AI agents ChatGPT and Google Magenta compared to human-based solutions in a standardized melody continuation task. Yearbook of Music Psychology, 32, Article e195. https://doi.org/10.5964/jbdgm.195