City of Zurich honors Tanya Birri
The city of Zurich is honoring the singing teacher and choir director Tanya Birri for special cultural services. The prize is endowed with 20,000 francs. The city's art prize, worth CHF 50,000, goes to the choreographer and performer Alexandra Bachzetsis.
According to the city's statement, Tanya Birri's "Female Funk Project" was one of the most important nuclei for today's Zurich music scene. Various successful singers took their first steps there. Up to 200 singing students a week attended Tanya Birri's school. Since the early nineties, she has been doing important mediation work, promoting participation long before this became a central concept in cultural promotion.
The 46-year-old from Zurich is constantly developing and running new cultural community platforms for amateurs, semi-professional singers and soloists. In her current large-scale project "Deine Stadt singt" (Your city sings), the excellent networker leads choirs in Zurich, Baden and Lucerne. Between 100 and 200 singers, adults and children, take to the stage for the choirs' performances, most recently in December 2017 in Zurich's Volkshaus.
