Chamber music pieces around the clarinet by Johann Carl Eschmann, Paul Juon, Richard Flury and Paul Müller Zurich.
Sibylle Ehrismann
(translation: AI)
- 19 Jan 2022
In the recording studio from left: Kraege, Röthlisberger, Engeli and Umiglia. Photo: zVg
If you talk about musical romanticism, then the clarinet is not far away. Its soft, full-bodied tone has something exuberant, something lushly romantic about it. This is also revealed on the new CD by the versatile clarinettist Bernhard Röthlisberger, with which he has been released on the Naxos Musiques Suisses label. Swiss chamber music - Romantics from two centuries presented.
This is the second recording that Röthlisberger has tackled during the grueling lockdown in 2020. His research for the project Swiss Clarinet Music (Naxos Musiques Suisses NXMS 7002, SMZ 4/2021, S. 16) also brought to light other scores that hardly anyone knows. Five of these works, composed by Johann Carl Eschmann (1826-1882), Paul Juon (1872-1940), Richard Flury (1896-1967) and Paul Müller Zurich (1898-1993), can now be heard here.
Not only is the selection surprising in its musical substance, the four performers also find a committed and distinguished interpretation of these chamber music trouvailles. Violinist Fióna Kraege is second concertmaster of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, cellist Milena Umiglia was the only Swiss representative in the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in 2017 and pianist Benjamin Engeli once won the ARD Music Competition in Munich as a member of the Tecchler Trio.
The oldest piece on this recording was composed in 1850-51. Two fantasy pieces op. 9 for clarinet and piano by Johann Carl Eschmann, who was born in Winterthur. He had studied with Mendelssohn in Leipzig and was friends with Wagner and Brahms. He was also a well-known figure in Zurich's musical life, but was quickly forgotten after his death. Nowadays, we occasionally hear something from Eschmann again; the Amadeus publishing house has him in its program. And each time he surprises us with his technical sophistication and gripping gestures. You can feel the musical joy when Röthlisberger and Engeli play his original pieces.
The Trio in A minor op. 17 by Paul Juon, born in Moscow in the Grisons, is the most important piece on this CD and lasts almost 24 minutes. Juon knows how to interweave the timbres of the clarinet and cello in a charming way, and the three performers masterfully shape the expansive, wide-ranging phrasing. In contrast, the trio by Richard Flury, written 50 years later, tends to emphasize the folk-like, cheerful side of the clarinet, which has a dance-like verve. Röthlisberger has once again recovered interesting pieces with good instinct.
Swiss chamber music - romantics from two centuries. Bernhard Röthlisberger, clarinet; Fióna Kraege, violin; Milena Umiglia, violoncello; Benjamin Engeli, piano. Naxos Musiques Suisses NXMS 7005
The new faces and horizons of CHEMS
This beginning of the year sees the arrival of two new members to the Conference of Swiss High Schools of Music - cross portraits in the light of the association's development strategy.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- 19 Jan 2022
Antoine Gilliéron - A major renewal within the association marks the transition to 2022. These appointments at the head of several institutions of higher education in music in Switzerland bring vital forces to CHEMS, which finds itself in the yardstick of a phase of implementation of a strategy aimed at opening up new horizons to the Swiss tertiary space for teaching music.
Common perspectives
The vision of CHEMS constitutes a contribution to building our society in constant evolution, socially, culturally and intellectually through the dissemination of knowledge, research and productions of higher music education.
As defined in its statutes, the missions of CHEMS are:
- The coordination of tasks and problems specific to universities of music;
- Le développement de la qualité de l'enseignement musical et de la recherche ;
- Defending the interests of the music colleges vis-à-vis Swissuniversities and the Chamber of Specialized Colleges, the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SEFRI) and the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Public Instruction (CDIP), as well as in higher and university education at national and international level;
- The exchange of experiences between national and international music academies as well as cooperation with the conferences of the heads of the music academies and music colleges in Germany, France, Italy and Austria, the Association Européenne des Conservatoires, the music academies and music colleges and the European League of Institutes of the Arts;
- The drafting of declarations and recommendations on professional and educational policy, including by disseminating them at specific communication levels or by publicizing them through the media;
- A strong relationship with professional musical organizations and Swiss musical life associations, such as the Association Suisse des Ecoles de Musique (ASEM) and SONART;
- Engagement in cultural and educational policy for the interests and promotion of music, musical creation, musical education/training and research, as well as for appropriate conditions for the promotion of young musicians and their initial and pre-professional musical training.
A strategy to be implemented
The Conférence des Hautes Écoles de Musique Suisses has recently been equipped with a piloting tool that will enable it to develop its future development in an equally harmonious and ambitious manner. He is developing an articulation of his vision and his missions around a credo that will strengthen his impact: coordination/prevision/federation.
CHEMS, through its role as a national leader and aware of the important challenges to be addressed, can thus advance in the realization of its objectives in the service of art and the constant improvement of society. In this way, the Swiss music schools will contribute to building a society of knowledge that can promote creativity as a key asset of Switzerland.
This is the reason why the excellent quality of the training offered in the field of music, as well as its articulation with production, research and innovation, are the main axes of the new strategy. It consists of providing clear measures for action in order to increase the legitimacy and visibility of higher music education in Switzerland and to ensure that new people with responsibilities within it can contribute in proportion to their talents.
Michael Bühler, Kalaidos University of Music
According to a statement from the Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences Switzerland, Michael Bühler has a broad professional musical education, which he expanded with an Executive MBA from the Universities of Zurich and Stanford (U.S.) and a doctorate from the University of Gloucestershire (UK). For more than ten years, he was artistic director and managing director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, before that he was executive director of the Swiss Youth Music Competition Foundation and orchestra director at Zurich Opera House. In addition to providing a professional musical education, the new rector also wants to prepare the students of the Kalaidos University of Music specifically for the "entrepreneurial challenges of the modern music market".
Béatrice Zawodnik, HEM Genève - Neuchâtel
Born in Lausanne in 1974, Béatrice Zawodnik is a musician, interpreter, teacher, curator and manager with a multifaceted career in the fields of culture, creation and education. Triplement diplômée du Conservatoire supérieur de musique de Genève en pédagogie musicale, piano et hautbois, Béatrice Zawodnik a complété son parcours par différentes formations post-grades en Suisse (hautbois baroque) et en Allemagne auprès de professeurs reputés (hautbois), dont Heinz Holliger.
Furthermore, in 2020, she was awarded the prize for the best Master in Public Administration by the Institut de hautes études en administration publique de l'Université de Lausanne (IDHEAP). His professional career is characterized by a solid and varied experience, which reflects the richness of his artistic, pedagogical and managerial background. At the musical level, Béatrice Zawodnik has enjoyed a wide range of activities for over fifteen years with numerous orchestras and ensembles, both baroque and contemporary, in Switzerland and abroad, and regularly collaborates with composers for whom she has created and recorded several works. Her teaching career of over thirty years, particularly as a professor of harpsichord and didactics at the music schools in Geneva, at the Geneva School of Music and at the Lausanne School of Music, guarantees her a solid knowledge of the field of higher education.
Finally, in terms of management, Béatrice Zawodnik has also demonstrated her skills as head of the establishment at the head of the Lausanne site of the Haute école de musique de Lausanne (HEMU) for the past six months. Since 2018, she has been responsible for the coordination of teaching at the HEM Genève - Neuchâtel, where she took over the management in January 2022.
While the next direction of the music department of the Hochschule der Künste Bern is not yet known, CHEMS warmly wishes the best for the rest of her career to Graziella Contratto who was the first woman to sit in the association as well as for their well-deserved retirements to Frank-Thomas Mitschke and Philippe Dinkel while warmly thanking all three of them for their great commitment, as positive as it is eminently effective and sustainable, with CHEMS.
Rebellious reinterpretation
The Ensemble Thélème has incorporated instruments such as the Fender Rhodes or Ondes Martenot into its Josquin interpretations.
Thomas Meyer
(translation: AI)
- 19 Jan 2022
Ensemble Thélème. Photo: Susanna Drescher
Josquin Desprez, "the music master", as Luther called him, was one of the first composers to expressly forbid singers to enrich their pieces with ornamentation and improvisation. Is such overweening authority the reason why two ensembles now seem to disrespect him? One CD features the famous portrait, although Josquin's head has been replaced by a skull. Josquin the Undead is the title of the Belgian ensemble Graindelavoix's selection of dances of death and lamentations (Glossa GCDP32117). Their performance is sonically dense and passionately languid. But there is also a great deal of respect in all of this, because Josquin is a revenant who cannot be killed.
This liveliness also characterizes the rebellious approach on the CD by the Basel ensemble Thélème. The title Baisiez moy can be understood in a rather obscene way. Even more striking, however, are the arrangements of some of the pieces. When La Bernardina is performed by two lutes, this is historically justifiable; if in Qui belles amours the lute and the Fender Rhodes, that almost legendary keyboard from the sixties, are added to the four vocal parts or in Nymphes des boisThe déploration of Ockeghem's death, even the Ondes Martenot, is sacrilegious. No historical information and no authenticity protect such an arrangement. But that is precisely what makes it so fresh and cheeky. It is a contemporary approach that is continued in the lively performance style, which tends towards the fragile. Neither ensemble cultivates a polished style. Incidentally, the interpretative approaches could hardly be more contrasting: While the chanson in particular Baisiez moy While Graindelavoix's music becomes a broad, ornate stream of sound, Ensemble Thélème's remains entertainingly playful and straightforward. C'est à vous, Maître Josquin, de choisir!
Josquin Desprez: Baisiez moy. Thélème; Jean-Christophe Groffe. Aparté Music AP 259
Sonic Matter: Improvise and install, sound and wander
Zurich has launched "Sonic Matter", an international festival for experimental music. Background information and a report on the first weekend.
Peter Révai
(translation: AI)
- 18 Jan 2022
Excerpt from a visual of Sonic Matter 2021 Image: Sonic Matter
Founded in 1986 by the two Swiss composers Thomas Kessler and Gérard Zinsstag on their own initiative, continued by various successors and finally taken over by the city government's culture department, the "Tage für Neue Musik" was a festival focused on international contemporary avant-garde music. After local officials had taken over responsibility for the financing, public relations and organization of the festival since 2012, but the curators they appointed changed every year, the festival eventually ran out of ideas. In 2018, the mayor also threatened to turn off the financial tap.
However, when the trained music teacher Diana Lehnert became the city's head of serious music in 2019, she decided to reorganize the festival. However, this should - understandably - involve a repositioning in terms of content and form. The city promised a considerable sum of around one million francs for the three-year trial run. In addition, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, which is well-funded by the state, promised its annual free contribution in the form of its own concert. The package would also include the concert hall, which would otherwise be exorbitantly expensive for third parties. It was also decided that the city would relinquish its sponsorship, reports Lehnert. With the task of finding a future director, it appointed Björn Gottstein, the previous artistic director of the Donaueschingen Music Days and, since this year, secretary of the board of trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in Munich, in consultation with the cultural directorate, the performer and lecturer at the Bern University of the Arts, Cathy van Eck, the oboist and music mediator Catherine Milliken and the double bass player and director of "Sonic Space Basel" at the Basel University of Music, Uli Fussenegger - heavyweight practitioners and advocates of experimental creation.
New management, planned orientation
As a worldwide blueprint and reservoir for all kinds of performative sound art, the Berlin Festival MaerzMusik can be described as such. The "Festival for Time Issues" thus proclaims with corresponding self-confidence on its website that it sees itself as a place for artistic experiences, encounters and joint reflection on how we deal with time. And further: Developed from the perspective of listening and supported by contemporary music, the festival opens up a space in which life, art and theory can converge with concerts, performances, installations, film presentations and discourse formats.
After a two-stage application round, a collective consisting of Zurich composer Katharina Rosenberger, Valais choreographer Julie Beauvais and Berlin ensemble manager Lisa Nolte was finally entrusted with the organization of the new festival in Zurich. Under the name "Sonic Matter"The award was given to a concept that aims to unite a whole range of different undertakings. On the one hand, it wants to create a platform for cross-disciplinary experiments, on the other hand it wants to open itself up artistically to interdisciplinarity and commit itself to diversity in gender orientation and sustainability in curating. The new management also wants to present its international offerings not only on the extended festival weekend, but also via a supervised web stream throughout the year in order to stay in contact with the audience on the one hand and to offer space for acute contemporary issues on the other. There are also plans to invite a different festival with exponents and examples each year in order to listen beyond its own borders. In 2021 it was the "Novas Frequências" from Rio de Janeiro.
With video sequences and noise music
In a potpourri of events, various instrumental, music-theatrical, performative, installative, multimedia and participatory productions were performed on the first weekend in December. The program focused on North and South American productions. An audio and video lounge, which was always open, offered the opportunity to listen to Brazilian electro-acoustic works that were performed at the guest festival Novas Frequências.
The theme of the first festival edition was "Turn". As in Berlin, where the festival organizers explicitly point out on their program pages whether a performance is composed, improvised music or even something completely different, the Sonic Matter organizers refer to who a performance is suitable for on their program sheet in the concert entries, such as "for people aged five and over who are good on their feet" or "people with impaired hearing". Before the actual opening concert, the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art hosted the concert installation "recommended for people aged ten and over". White Line with Zurich-based electric guitarist Samuel Toro Pérez. On three screens, flickering video images of a hand feeding a cigarette to a mouth by US artist Marina Rosenfeld could be seen. White lines appeared over and over again. The sequences also served as a score for the guitarist, who went through a lengthy exercise in noise music. This was followed by a performance in the storerooms of an off-gallery with the improvising French violist Franz Loriot, who virtuously beat "critical listeners" around the ears with never-ending cascades of harmonics.
Composition and improvisation without a gap
In the amphitheater-style Schiffbau Box of the Schauspielhaus, the following music was performed under the title Connectivity an exciting opening concert for "all those who like to sit, watch and listen for 90 minutes". The members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) from New York and Chicago impressively demonstrated that improvisation can meet the very highest musical standards and that there no longer has to be an artistic antithesis between composing and improvising. When John Cage and his American comrades-in-arms confronted the European music avant-garde over 70 years ago, the gulf seemed insurmountable until recently. The ideologies of mastering time through strict organization or focusing on the intrinsic time of sounds were irreconcilable. The pieces played with the utmost mastery Thistledow for piano trio and percussion and the situational Creative Construction SetTM for open form and instrumentation by the legendary improvisation grandmaster George E. Lewis and Nicole Mitchell's Cult of Electromagnetic Connectivity for flute, clarinet, percussion, violin and cello proved the opposite. The pit is a thing of the past, as long as the musicians here are able to promote something completely new in terms of form and content. This also included the performance of the multimedia and multi-part I See You by the Spanish composer Helga Arias, born in 1984. A string quartet with video projections, a highly musical piece. The Furrer student was ICE's Composer in Residence 2021, but was never able to be on site to work out details with the musicians during the development of her commissioned work due to the pandemic. She is currently in the process of writing up her experiences of communicating at a distance in a dissertation entitled Composing the politics of musical creation: a proposal for alternative working interactions for the Anton Bruckner University in Linz. The trained music teacher and composer currently lives in Samedan, where she teaches at the Academia Engiadina.
In the headphones and in the large hall
By contrast, the performance Ear Action by Berlin composers Neo Hülcker and Stellan Veloce may have been too under-complex even for five-year-olds, as recommended. The performers were the musicians Philip Bartels, Simone Keller, Moritz Mühlenbach and Lara Stanic. The audience had to sit in a row in a darkened hall facing a wall. As soon as everyone was fitted with hearing protection, the performers began to rub various objects such as a violin bow against it - analog musique concrète with the means of arte povera, so to speak.
Afterwards, the Tonhalle Orchestra, conducted by Pierre-André Valade, kept its promise in the main hall. His extra concert began with the work written for large orchestra and premiered in Lucerne in 2010.TURN for orchestraof the currently omnipresent Dieter Ammannwhich lent its name to the first edition of the festival. "Turn" means turning point and refers to the contrast and change of perspective that takes place after around two thirds of the piece. After many Boulez-style arpeggios and chords and with a steady basic impulse, the piece unexpectedly almost comes to a standstill. The rhythm is suddenly restrained, so that TURN threatens to disintegrate into disparate parts. Sarah Nemtsov, who was born in Germany in 1980 and is the author of the equally large-scale dropped.drowned from 2017, is currently being played everywhere. Everything is "well done": large-scale textures develop from the non-soloistic, prepared piano and an amplified harp, which is also prepared. This is then mirrored by the strings and percussion, followed by wind instruments. Eclair by French composer Eric Montalbetti was performed at the suggestion of his compatriot, the conductor in Zurich. Montalbetti was primarily active as artistic director of the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France for 18 years until 2014, before venturing into the public eye with his compositions. He, too, relies on large-scale textures, but unlike Nemtsov, they almost never get off the ground and do nothing more than bore the listener dramaturgically.
From the cavern to the barracks
The installation Under the Klopstock meadow demanded unshakeable perseverance. According to the program, it would be suitable for anyone who enjoys exploring underground spaces. As poetically named as the park above the cavern is, the diesel plant below it, which has long since been demolished, is all the more banal. The remaining empty space was simply amplified tel quel and the result was an installation declared to be a sound trail. The fact that Zurich-based Kaspar König had the guts to lure festival visitors there in the first place is more of a brazen piece than a sad one. For "people aged five and over who are good on their feet, including those with impaired hearing", there was a short excursion to experience the acoustically polluted Limmat Valley. According to Zurich sound artist Andres Bosshard, this works best on the valley slopes and along the river.
The following day, the twelve-piece Madness Ensemble, based in Zurich, improvised freely for "everyone with 150 minutes of sitting, fumbling and standing". It organized a so-called workout jazz marathon on the stage of the Kunstraum Walcheturm. The "indeterminate meta-composition" developed along the level range of a jet taking off at just under 100 dB, whereby most listeners were hardly given a real chance to perceive the clash of new music and improvisation, of visual art and performance, in a differentiated way as promised.
In today's dance hall of the Alte Kaserne, the Geneva ensemble Batida performed with Diĝitawhich means digital in Esperanto, presented a minimalist homage to the digital world for "everyone aged ten and over". Four musicians equipped with synthesizers and samplers and a sound director were shielded inside a cube of screens. Graphics with abstract landscapes in black and white by the drawing collective Hécatombe were projected onto them. With Glenn the festival finale was celebrated in the "border line club culture" between 8.30 and 10.00 pm. It was intended for "people aged twelve and over who like to dance". The two creators, Nicolas Kort and Ricardo Eizirik, focused on "industrial and dark electronic" and promised that their concert would be loud. It was very, very loud.
Outlook
The other two festival titles have already been decided. Turn" will be followed by "Rise" and "Leap". Both are very much to be wished to the management collective. In order to increase quality and topicality, it would be urgently advisable for the Tonhalle management to stay out of the programming and for the Collegium Novum, which is also well-funded by the city and specializes in new music, not to be absent due to its participation in a competition for young talent, but to participate without any ifs or buts.
Market researchers from Econcept are conducting surveys on "Sonic Matter" 2021 on behalf of the city of Zurich in order to record the preferences and reactions of the audience as well as their views on diversity and inclusion. It remains to be hoped that, in the interests of successful location marketing, the city authorities will not draw the wrong conclusions afterwards, as in the case of the Bührle Foundation ... Of course, a total of 973 visitors for all live events raises the question: Will the city's expenditure of three quarters of a million francs for three editions remain available for advanced music if "Sonic Matter" goes belly up one day in the distant future, or will it then be relegated entirely to underground music with the argument that it too can be experimental?
*
The publicist and music critic Peter Révai applied to the presidential department for the festival tender. The documents he submitted by email on Whit Monday the year before last were rejected on the grounds that the deadline was Whit Sunday.
Orchestral positions for Basel students
Basel music students with successes: Olivier Carillier has won the solo viola position in the Basel Symphony Orchestra, Ariane Rovesse de Alencar Freitas the clarinet position in the Orquestra Sinfónica de Porto Alegre and Tamás Dávid is concertmaster in the Budapest MAV Symphony Orchestra.
PM/SMZ_WB
(translation: AI)
- 18 Jan 2022
Olivier Carillier. Photo: zVg
French violist Olivier Carillier completed his Master's degree in Performance with Silvia Simionescu in 2020, having previously studied with Raphaël Oleg. He is already working as assistant principal violist in the Basel orchestra and will take up his permanent position for the new season in August 2022.
Brazilian Ariane Rovesse is studying for a Master's degree in Performance with François Benda. Tamás Dávid is an alumnus (class of Adelina Oprean and Raphaël Oleg) and obtained his soloist diploma at the FHNW School of Music in summer 2020.
Materials on Liszt online
The aim of a long-term project led by Christiane Wiesenfeldt at Heidelberg University, among others, is to record all sources and works by the composer Franz Liszt in a digital directory and make them freely available online.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- 17 Jan 2022
Franz Liszt 1839. picture (detail): Henri Lehmann (1814-1882), Musée Carnavalet Paris, WikiCom.,SMPV
As the researcher from the Department of Musicology at the University of Heidelberg emphasizes, this is intended to close a central gap in music research on the 19th century. The Saxon State and University Library in Dresden and the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar are involved in the project. The DFG is funding the project for a maximum of twelve years. The first project phase has now been approved with funding of 1.2 million euros.
The digital Liszt portal is being developed jointly at the three project locations Heidelberg, Dresden and Weimar. The aim is to make the composer's works and their versions visible and researchable. The researchers involved are also planning to visualize the often complex contexts of the works.
With a Year of Choirs 2022, the German Choral Association wants to generate public and cultural-political attention for the concerns of the choral scene and, in particular, sustainably strengthen work with young talent.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- 13 Jan 2022
(Image: German Choir Association)
All choirs, clubs, associations and choral music institutions in Germany are called upon to join in and place their own activities in 2022 under the motto "Year of Choirs". According to the association, the aim is to work together to ensure that "choirs receive nationwide support, young talent is strengthened in the long term and the future of choral music can be secured".
The German Choral Association itself will offer choirs the biggest possible stage in 2022 with its own major events such as the German Choral Festival, which will take place in Leipzig from 26 to 29 May with more than 350 registered ensembles, a digital choir map and other lighthouse projects and campaigns.
A French manufacturer of clarinet and saxophone accessories produces a new double profile reed.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- Jan 12, 2022
The French manufacturer of clarinet and saxophone accessories, Ligaphone, is expanding its product range with the realization of the new double-profile reed, a reed with a recess (counter-profile) on the underside of the reed. This is the first time in the history of woodwind instruments that the top and bottom of the reed have been designed to complement each other. After a long period of research, the two complementary profiles complement each other perfectly. The elongated hollowing/deepening on the underside of the reed improves the vibration. The profile of the upper side of the blade corresponds to the traditional manufacturing method and is characterized by particular precision. The reed is freed from its internal tensions, shows more flexibility, a better response, less "deformation" at the reed edges. The reed is made from the famous natural cane of the French Var region in the best reed-making tradition.
The "Classic" collection is available in 6 gauges (from 1½ to 4) for Bb clarinet (French system) as well as soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone. It will soon be supplemented by the "Jazz" collection.
FemaleClassics is launching a classical concert series in Zurich in June that will exclusively program works by female composers.
PM/SMZ
(translation: AI)
- Jan 12, 2022
Meredith Kuliew, violist and initiator of the project, has noticed that a lot of experimentation and new formats are being developed in the concert business. However, the work of female composers is still being overlooked. This is why FemaleClassics aims to give a stage exclusively to music composed by women.
The first cycle of three concerts will take place in Zurich from June 16 to 19. Prior to this, amateur musicians (violin, viola, cello) are invited to a workshop on June 11 to actively explore chamber music works by female composers.
Joel Schoch, music alumnus of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), has been awarded a CHF 10,000 work grant from the Ausserrhodische Kulturstiftung.
PM/SMZ_WB
(translation: AI)
- Jan 12, 2022
Joel Schoch (Image: Joel Schoch)
According to the ZHdK press release, Schoch studied composition for film, theater and media. The sound artist and game soundtrack composer experiments with a wide variety of sounds, from plastic trombones to old organ pipes, giving video games a unique atmosphere.
In spring 2020, his master project, the soundtrack for the game "FAR: Lone Sails", was honored with the Best Game Music award at the Game Audio Awards. The Game Audio Awards are among the most important European awards in the field of game music and sounds.
Swiss Jazz Days
The Swiss Jazz Days association is committed to creating a community of interest for Swiss jazz professionals and organizes a national gathering.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- Jan 12, 2022
On the weekend of February 26 and 27, the Swiss jazz scene will meet at the Progr cultural center in Bern, where the 14th Jazzwerkstatt Bern takes place. The initiators of the Swiss Jazz Days, led by Simon Petermann, want to bring together Swiss jazz professionals in a national interest group in order to strengthen the social perception and international appeal of Swiss jazz. The players in the Swiss jazz scene should regularly exchange ideas and realize joint projects. This includes an annual interactive congress, such as the one now taking place at the end of February. Various formats such as workshops (partly organized by Sonart - Musicians Switzerland organized), presentations, discussions and speed dating get participants talking. Tickets and program via
The violinist and conductor Riccardo Minasi, who is also principal conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, becomes the first artistic director of the La Scintilla Orchestra, the original sound ensemble of the Zurich Opera House.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- Jan 10, 2022
Minasi was co-founder and from 2012 to 2015 director of the ensemble Pomo d'Oro, since 2017 he has been chief conductor of the Motzarteumorchester of Salzburg and artist in residence at the Ensemble Resonanz of the Elbphilarmonie in Hamburg. Previous engagements at Zurich Opera House include the ballet by Christian Spuck The Sandman with the music of Schnittke and Schumann as well as Mozart's Don Giovanni and Abduction from the Seraglio, furthermore Orlando Paladino, Il Matrimonio Segreto et al.
As a soloist and concertmaster, Minasi has worked with Le Concert des Nations by Jordi Savall, Accademia Bizantina, Concerto Italiano, Il Giardino Armonico, Al Ayre Español, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di S.Cecilia, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid and at the invitation of Kent Nagano at the Knowlton Belcanto Festival (Canada).
The Zurich Opera House's La Scintilla ensemble was founded in 1998 as the result of a collaboration between the opera house and the original sound specialist Nikolaus Harnoncourt, on the basis of which the orchestra initially adapted playing techniques to the latest findings in historical performance practice.
Covid financial aid will be continued
The government of the Canton of St. Gallen is presenting a supplement to the cantonal implementation law for the continuation of financial aid in the cultural sector in 2022.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- 07 Jan 2022
Seat of the St. Gallen cantonal government. Photo: Flavio - eCommerce (see below)
The continuation of the financial aid is urgent due to the highly tense and existence-threatening economic situation of cultural actors and the general epidemiological development of recent weeks, writes the canton. For losses between November 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, cultural enterprises and cultural professionals submitted a total of 492 applications for loss compensation by November 30, 2021. In addition, 53 applications were submitted for contributions to transformation projects.
The coronavirus support measures for the cultural sector would have expired at the end of 2021 due to the time limit in Art. 11 of the Federal Covid-19 Act. The National Council and Council of States therefore decided in the 2021 winter session to extend the measures until the end of 2022. On 17 December 2021, the Federal Council also extended the period of validity of the Covid-19 Cultural Ordinance, which specifies Art. 11.
The government estimates that a maximum of CHF 15.4 million will be required for the third phase in terms of a cost ceiling. Half of this (CHF 7.7 million each) would have to be financed by the federal government and half by the canton. This results in an additional requirement for cantonal funds of CHF 4.04 million. The cost ceiling for the cantonal funds for the measures financed half and half by the federal government therefore amounts to a total of CHF 13.89 million for the second and third phases together (instead of the previous CHF 9.85 million for the second phase).
Today's common theories of harmony assign special significance to bass and chord fundamentals. Using psychological experiments and analyses of databases, music psychologists in Graz have now proven, at least for jazz, that perception is more complex.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- 06 Jan 2022
Image: Donald Giannatti/unsplash.com (see below)
Richard Parncutt and Lazar Radovanovic analyzed databases with 100 arrangements of jazz standards. The results showed, among other things, that root notes, which are theoretically less ambiguous, are more frequently doubled in the bass, and root notes of minor chords are interpreted more ambiguously. Diminished triads are often interpreted as fragments of a seventh chord.
The results are consistent with the theories of psychoacoustician Ernst Terhardt that the perception of musical chords is the result of cultural and historical processes.
The Chur Singing School is celebrating the 140th birthday of Igor Stravinsky with a performance of his Mass for choir and wind instruments. Advanced choir singers are invited to actively participate.
Music newspaper editorial office
(translation: AI)
- 05 Jan 2022
Stravinsky monument on Lake Geneva. Photo: Balakate / depositophotos.com,SMPV
The project starts on January 22 with a lecture by musicologist Natalia Treyer and the first rehearsals. During the rehearsal weekend on April 2 and 3, the choir will travel through Switzerland in Stravinsky's footsteps. The mass is to be performed in fall 2022 or spring 2023 together with Jubilate Deo by Giovanni Gabrieli and O sacrum Convivum by Gabriel Jackson. The musical director is Lilian Köhli. Further information and registration: