Deda Cristina Colonna is a director and choreographer. Her preferred repertoire is 17th and 18th century opera and contemporary music theater. Her work is strongly influenced by her own stage experience as a dancer and actress. Her particular expertise lies in baroque dance, rhetorical gestures and historically informed acting. Based on historically informed stage practice, her direction seeks contact with today's audience.

Deda Cristina Colonna graduated in ballet from the Civico Istituto Musicale Brera (Novara) and the École Supérieure d'Etudes Chorégraphiques (Paris). She completed her studies at the Sorbonne (Paris) and specialized in Renaissance and Baroque dance. She also graduated from the drama school of the Teatro Stabile di Genova and performed in productions ranging from Shakespeare to Cechov and Genet in Italy, France and Germany. She worked with the company "Theater der Klänge" (Düsseldorf) and was a soloist and guest choreographer with the New York Baroque Dance Company.

Original article:
https://www.fhnw.ch/de/die-fhnw/hochschulen/musik/schola-cantorum-basiliensis/aktuelles/neue-dozentin-deda-colonna

Murten Classics already brought the Geneva composer Caroline Boissier-Butini to mind in 2016 with her 6th Piano Concerto La Suisse. This summer, her 4th piano concerto can be heard at the Serenade Concert on August 25 in the Schlosshof Murten. Pianist Daria Korotkova and the Soundeum Chamber Ensemble will perform under the direction of Yacin Elbay.

This will be preceded by a book launch and a concert introduction. A few years ago, the musicologist Irène Minder-Jeanneret published her dissertation "The best musician in town" - Caroline Boissier-Butini (1786-1836) and Geneva's musical life at the beginning of the 19th century the biography of the pianist. The author will present the biography, which has now been published in French, at the book launch on August 25 at 5 pm. In addition, the modern first edition of the 4th Piano Concerto and the Fantaisie sur l'air de la belle Rosine presented. 

After the academy had to be canceled last year due to coronavirus, it will take place online this year. Since July 11, the students (violin, viola, cello, piano) have been taught by six renowned lecturers. The lessons will take place in 14 European countries. The online course is based on the tried-and-tested Astona presence program: private lessons, class lessons, house concerts and public concerts.

Unfortunately, online lessons prevent the formation of chamber music ensembles and the orchestra. Instead, there are practical seminars and a composition competition for the participants. Daily exchanges and evening sessions ensure the typical Astona togetherness.

The young talents can be experienced at two free streaming concerts:
Saturday, July 17, 2021, 8 - 9.15 p.m. and
Saturday, July 24, 2021, 20-21.15 (gala concert).
Streaming links via www.astona-international.ch
 

According to a press release from the festival and a report in the online magazine Pizzicato, the VFO is experiencing a Covid outbreak. The orchestra consists mainly of unvaccinated scholarship holders between the ages of 18 and 28, writes Pizzicato. After all members of the orchestra were isolated, the festival sent them home.

Conductor Valery Gergiev will now conduct the VFCO at the opening event of the festival on July 16. Pianist Denis Matsuev and trumpeter Timur Martynov will remain the soloists. The first evening concert will feature Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto and Prokofiev's First Symphony, the second Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and Prokofiev's First Symphony.

Pizzicato article:
https://www.pizzicato.lu/verbier-festival-hit-hard-by-covid-19/

There have been many comparisons of how people perceive language and music. However, the differences are difficult to grasp - especially when there are overlaps, such as in rhymes or rap music. In order to better define the boundaries, the international research team initiated an online study with more than one hundred people from a total of 15 different native speaker backgrounds.

The study focused on the Dùndún drum. This is used as a musical instrument in south-western Nigeria, but is also used for communication. The drum imitates the tonal language of the Yorùbá, creating a so-called language surrogate. The team compared the acoustic properties of linguistic and musical Dùndún recordings. They then asked the test subjects to listen to the same recordings and indicate whether they were listening to speech or music.

Using the data collected, the researchers developed a statistical model that can be used to predict when a sound sample is perceived as music-like or speech-like. Volume, pitch, timbre and timing proved to be decisive. A regular rhythm and frequent changes in timbre, for example, make a sequence sound more music-like, while a lower intensity and fewer changes in pitch appear speech-like.

Original article:
Durojaye, C., Fink, L., Roeske, T., Wald-Fuhrmann, M. and Larrouy-Maestri, P. (2021). Perception of Nigerian Dùndún Talking Drum Performances as Speech-Like vs. Music-Like: The Role of Familiarity and Acoustic Cues. Frontiers in Psychology 12:652673.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.652673

The from the Youth Classics Association The Swiss International Music Academy (SIMA) is one of the established Swiss masterclasses for talented young musicians (violin, viola and cello) from Switzerland and abroad. After a coronavirus-related break in 2020, over 60 talented young musicians aged between 10 and 25 - around half of whom are from Switzerland - will be taking part in the 11th SIMA at Musikinsel Rheinau from July 16 to 25 this year.

High-quality teaching and new insights
Once again, selected lecturers from renowned music academies in Switzerland and abroad, most of whom are also active as soloists or orchestral musicians, have been engaged. They work with the participants during the Academy as part of the solo lessons. In the lessons, the young musicians are taught technical basics, works are interpreted and the participants are prepared for competitions, examinations and auditions. In addition to individual lessons, there are also rehearsals with accompaniment for strings, chamber music lessons and chamber orchestra rehearsals as well as various workshops in the group, such as a violin making course.

We automatically store our everyday experiences in our so-called episodic memory, a memory system based on the central brain structure hippocampus. Until now, researchers have assumed that only conscious experiences are stored in the episodic memory and via the hippocampus and also influence behavior.

A new study by researchers led by Katharina Henke from the University of Bern now shows that unconsciously experienced information is also stored in episodic memory and has an impact on behavior. The researchers also discovered that only consciously learned, but not unconsciously learned, episodic knowledge is subject to a forgetting process. The findings are also likely to have consequences for memorization strategies in music practice.

More info:
https://www.unibe.ch/aktuell/medien/media_relations/medienmitteilungen/2021/medienmitteilungen_2021/unser_gehirn_vergisst_unbewusste_erlebnisse_nicht/index_ger.html

The word "bio-piece", an analogy to the English abbreviation "biopic" for a film biography, is not yet very common in music literature and journalism. This could be due to the fact that the subject itself has never had an easy time of it. The question of whether autobiographical composition is permissible or even feasible has often been discussed, criticized and even ridiculed in the history of music. Richard Strauss, who would later work in this direction himself, recommended, for example, that a "menu" should be set to music instead.

Is the "success" of such confessional music only possible if the composer himself is well-known enough and the fate depicted is drastic and harsh enough? The idea seems to lead in the wrong direction. Apart from the somewhat questionable category of the "success" of a work of art, its quality must result more from the "how", the facture, than from the "what", the extra-musical content. And doesn't every piece of music embody a piece of life (standing on its own) in the broadest sense, which communicates itself to the listener and can and should awaken subjective associations in them? Establishing references to real historical facts and using biographical references does not usually seem necessary. Many composers later erased or negated their own relevant information.

Autobiographical composition is not bound to specific forms. Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser bears strong autobiographical traits, but also Richard Strauss' Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings, Hector Berlioz' Symphonie fantastiqueBedřich Smetana's first string quartet and many other works contain autobiographical motifs in explicit or concealed form. In this context, Mario Venzago's decision to write a solo concerto seems simple, clear and logical, as it is unmistakably an "I" speaking musically, dealing with an immediate sound environment.

At almost 73 years of age, conductor Mario Venzago, who has spent his life surprising, touching and inspiring his audiences, is once again showing a completely new side. For his farewell concert with the Bern Symphony Orchestra, of which he was chief conductor for eleven years, he will premiere his own violin concerto with the great violinist Soyoung Yoon at the Casino Bern on June 24/25, 2021. Pandemic laws are still in force, but the strict government restrictions will be lifted exclusively for this concert and 600 spectators will be admitted for the first time. As a result, the hall is well filled with a music-hungry audience that receives Venzago's exquisite program (almost exclusively 20th century Swiss composers, including three principal conductors of the Bern Symphony Orchestra) with great alertness, gratitude and frenetic applause.

The violin concerto comes at the end of the evening, after a movement ("Nachklang") from Fritz Brun's Seventh Symphony, the Orchestral Variations op. 20 by Paul Kletzki and the Symphonie liturgique by Arthur Honegger. A remarkable composition full of inner references; in particular, the Honegger symphony seems to have been the inspiration for the composition of the violin concerto. Technically, this is by far the most demanding work of the evening for the musicians.

The composition benefits from Venzago's 40 years of practical conducting experience: the result is fascinating, ever-changing orchestral colors and movements, a murderous yet perfectly violinistic solo part and a carefully crafted balance and transparency that provides insight into a multi-layered sound cosmos and imaginative structures. Mario Venzago, who is known as a cheerful, humorous person with a great talent for entertainment, presents his violin concerto to the audience as an autobiographical and very personal work that runs through just as many stages of his conducting life in five movements. It is therefore all the more surprising, even upsetting, that this "confession" as a whole is so deeply melancholy.

The tense first bars introduce a twelve-tone row that forms the basis of the work as an "I" theme. It soon turns into a series of recurring, horrific, unyielding beats, between which the solo violin writhes and struggles desperately as an individual. There is hardly any time to catch one's breath or linger, the forward movement seems like an unstoppable compulsion. Seemingly humorous allusions are heard, such as Schubert's Pigeon maillively tango and waltz sounds (for the "Bern" section). The cheerfulness has the same effect as in the originalPigeon mail, feigned. Two chromatic "ascents", inspired by Ludwig Hohl's Ascent, determine and bracket the concert for long stretches.

They are not walks. They are more like an arduous, violent upward push in tiny intermittent steps, accompanied by stone or low blows, sometimes even entire avalanches of rubble. The infinitely arduous ascent - probably a metaphor for an (artist's) career - thus becomes the general theme, and the piece's constants are drivenness and agony. Exposed to terrible, violent currents and helpless loneliness in icy "heights", the "I" of this musical narrative never reaches the summit. Only the two contemplations of a (desolate) mountain lake provide a point of calm - here the woodwinds accompany the solo violin in the highest register.

The violins are missing in this concerto; in the resulting void, the solo violin moves together with the concertmaster, who, according to Venzago, is supposed to be its "support and mountain guide". The loneliness does not diminish as a result; rather, one seems to perceive a doubling of the ego or its shadow. The only counterpart here is madness in the form of the mercilessly ringing cymbal antique, which the solo voice encounters as a soloist at times, and in the most succinct Shostakovich reminiscence, death also knocks briefly at the door on the woodblock. Triumph, which could also be part of such a "curriculum vitae", is nowhere to be found. The longing that the Pigeon mail-quote - what is it aimed at? We don't find out, perhaps because we don't know the private enunciations of the work; we hear slightly moldy, chromatically colored thirds and sixths like ciphers of bitter self-irony.

By making the artist's career the main idea of this musical biography, it seems to evoke a certain image of man that has significantly shaped our era and probably continues to do so. The performance ethicist, the person who directs his entire endeavors towards his personal performance and its successes, appears here in the special form of the artist who devotes his life to music. In this profession, perfection is a must, the "marriage" indissoluble, the associated suffering unavoidable. Even if the Christian faith is obviously alluded to as a possibility of salvation, e.g. in the form of a reminiscence of the hermit's Salve Regina, the words of St. Peter "and wept bitterly" or the corresponding melodic paraphrase from the St. John Passion, interwoven with the twelve-tone row that defines the work, is the final word of the composition.

The realization of a mistake that cannot be undone? A missed life even? At the same time, a homage to the greatest of all composers for Venzago, Johann Sebastian Bach? The pain of this main and final thought is communicated with great intensity. Only in the long echo of the final bars could there be a hint of consolation. The hope of the piece seems to be that this message of life becomes audible, even understandable. It is an admirable compositional achievement that the symbolism of the sound and the musical language communicate themselves directly and awaken the most diverse associations, and that the pain shines in such overwhelming musical colors and sounds.

It would be misleading to draw conclusions about the composer's mental state from the musical depiction of such life pain. A bio-piece is not a private diary. It may be based on a personal statement, and the personal aspect is strongly present when the composer himself conducts and refers to it as a moderator. Nevertheless, the personal statement, every autobiographical motif, is cast in sound, in form, naturally stylized. It takes on a life of its own to create something new that takes the initial idea to other levels. The suffering of the self becomes the human condition. The music evokes not only the suffering itself, but also the empathic view of it. This process, the transformation of what has possibly been experienced into something valid, can also be read as a metaphor for the genesis of a work in the "Ascent" passages. The term bio-piece thus merely describes the external framework of a composition and a special type of source material. Other aspects are decisive for the processing, the "how" and its interpretation.

The City of Zurich's 50,000 Swiss franc art prize will go to musician Franziska Schläpfer, known as Big Zis, in 2021. Schläpfer combines various genres, art forms and scenes (hip-hop, jazz, improv, video art, dance and so on) and is, according to the city's press release, "a leading figure for many: First and foremost because of her artistic talent, but also because of her way of performing with integrity".

The award for special cultural merit - endowed with 20,000 francs - is presented by the city of Zurich to music promoter Veit Stauffer. Until December 31 last year, Stauffer worked at Rec Rec at Rotwandstrasse 64, one of the city's central music venues. In its heyday, Rec Rec was the largest independent distributor in Switzerland. It was a place of work where more than 70 people were dedicated to music.

Get Going!" is start-up funding from the Fondation Suisa, which is based on the philosophy of "making things possible". Every year, four grants of CHF 25,000 each are awarded as part of this funding. Applications are open to musical and creative people who wish to realize artistic ideas beyond the usual genre, age or project categories. The prerequisite for applications from authors, writers and musicians is that they can demonstrate that their work has a clear connection to current Swiss or Liechtenstein music creation.
 

Registration deadline: 30.08.2021
Further information and invitation to tender:
https://www.fondation-suisa.ch/de/werkbeitraege/get-going-2021
 

The festival aims to combine nature, people and art. The interaction between artists and audience, i.e. the live experience, is the central concern of the organizers. Performances will take place in the Old Town Hall Passage and at the Walcheweiher pond (Strolling Art in the Winterthur Forest). The musicians Elio Coria, Jonas Iten, Nicolás Gagliani, Fernando Noriega Diaz, Carolina Mazalesky and the duo Silbersaiten, the writer Meret Gut and the visual artist Luca Harlacher will also be taking part.

Dates and locations:

https://www.ikwfestival.com

Compared to the second survey in September 2020, the willingness to resume cultural visits has increased significantly. While only 18% of respondents were willing to visit cultural institutions or events again "without major reservations" back then, this figure had already risen to 30% in April 2021, although it still remains in the minority.

36% of respondents expect to reduce their spending on cultural visits (September 2020: 55%). Only 55% of subscribers surveyed intend to renew their season tickets (September 2020: 69%).

Parallel to the third survey of the population, a survey of cultural institutions was conducted for the first time. This shows that cultural institutions have been hit hard by the COVID crisis: 79% of the institutions surveyed (with the exception of libraries) have registered for short-time working and/or applied for compensation. 41% of the institutions that offer subscriptions have recorded a decline in subscription numbers for the 2020/2021 season, on average 35%.

More info:
https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-84373.html

For 41 years, the Basel Sinfonietta has been committed to performing contemporary music in unusual formations and concert formats alongside the familiar and the unknown. The orchestra is also sticking to this premise at the end of the 2020/21 season. The program at Stadtcasino Basel includes not only three works by Frank Zappa, the rock provocateur who died in 1993, but also the world premiere of a drumset concerto by composer Oliver Waespi - with Swiss percussionist Jojo Mayer as the soloist.

In the run-up to the concert with the title Jojo, Zappa and rock'n'roll conductor Baldur Brönnimann revealed that it was originally supposed to take place outdoors. "We wanted to combine Waespi with works by Bernhard Gander and others, but in the end we had to reduce the size of the orchestra and play without a break." This is a good illustration of the challenges facing the cultural sector as a result of the pandemic. Nevertheless, thanks to the flattening of the infection curve, the evening can finally be performed in front of an audience again, which Daniela Martin, Managing Director of the Basel Sinfonietta, describes as an "exciting moment" during her introduction. She sums up: "It was a season of ups and downs, but we mastered it."

The performance opens with Dupree's Paradise from Zappa's 1984 album The Perfect Stranger. The approximately seven-minute piece, which, as the composer said, was set in 1964 during an early morning jam session in a Los Angeles bar, presents itself like an experimental and emphatically expressive film soundtrack: spring-like and optimistic moments are quickly followed by dark excursions that are sometimes reminiscent of George Gershwin. The focus is on the constantly changing rhythms, which rise and fall like a conversation that slowly gets going, then picks up speed, only to peter out again. Until the whole thing ends with a new build-up, expansive instrumentation and a bang.

Then it is the turn of Get Whitey. This work from 1992 focuses on complex rhythms and polyrhythmic structures and is like the background music to an unexpected encounter. One in which the clarinet, harp and acoustic guitar, for example, first shyly sniff at and express themselves, but then become increasingly self-confident and demanding. Before the Sinfonietta concludes this part of the concert, Brönnimann talks about Zappa's 15th birthday and his wish to be allowed to make a phone call to his role model Edgar Varèse. The call did indeed go through, but the composer was not at home. However, this in no way detracted from Zappa's lifelong fascination with Varèse's work. This also The Perfect Stranger from 1994. "It has many echoes of Varèse's piece Déserts on", confirms Brönnimann. According to Zappa, the work is about a vacuum cleaner salesman who has a debauched conversation with a careless housewife. This manifests itself in almost drunken motifs, which meet repeatedly surging western motifs and feature plucked string instruments and timpani beats. It is a highly successful and curious confrontation between serious and popular music, in which the rhythms are subjected to a constant game of cat-and-mouse - challenging and rewarding at the same time.

While the stage is being rearranged for the last part of the program, composer Oliver Waespi and drummer Jojo Mayer join the conductor to talk about Frank Zappa and their own collaboration. It turned out to be a great experience, says Brönnimann. Especially because the intersection of rock and classical music came into play. When asked how he approached the composition of his latest piece Volatile Gravity Waespi explains: "Like many musicians, I'm not particularly good at dancing, but I feel like a rhythm person." His three-part work for drumset and orchestra is a kind of musical exploration of a city. The form of the piece is articulated along an imaginary urban space with several centers - spanned between built and unbuilt, structured and open areas. This is reflected live in the first part entitled High Frequency Trading which switches from 0 to 100 in no time at all and provides both dynamism and drama.

At first, Jojo Mayer's drums are almost drowned in the orchestral sea, but thanks to his perseverance and virtuosity, the New York-based artist increasingly manages to play himself into the spotlight and make use of the improvisational opportunities that present themselves. At times, the music seems like a high-wire act without a safety net: Mayer's patterns dance above the undulating waves that the orchestra constantly throws up. You can sense that shipwreck is just a stroke of the oars or drums away, but the challenge is mastered together. This is also because Mayer knows how to take up the orchestra's interjections in his solos and respond to them with force and precision. The clashing forces of orchestra and soloist are not only on an equal footing, but the participants succeed in finding each other - and uniting - the longer they play together. The result is pulsating music that draws on rock and classical music in equal measure and is able to maintain the created tension right to the end.

The international competition for new acousmatic music Ars Electronica Forum Valais will be held for the 7th time in 2021. The festival and the jury have now announced the results: Eleven works by composers from Switzerland, Greece, France, Great Britain, Israel, Argentina, Colombia and the USA (in alphabetical order) made it into the ranks of the Ars Electronica Forum Wallis Selection 2021: Manuella Blackburn/Microplastics, Lee Gilboa/Redacted, Bernadette Johnson/Summer Fragments, Panayiotis Kokoras/AI Phantasy, Thibault Madeline/Enfant Sauvage, Thibault Madeline/Le murmure de Bombus, Nicolás Medero Larrosa/nightblooming-genera, David Nguyen/Whale Song Stranding, Richard Scott/Thunder actually bycicles, Sylvain Souklaye/Soliloquy in motion, Juan Carlos Vasquez/Channel Zero.

Image: Forum Wallis

From left to right: Manuella Blackburn, Bernadette Johnson, Lee Gilboa, Sylvain Souklaye, Richard Scott, Nicolás Medero Larrosa, Juan Carlos Vasquez, David Nguyen, Panayiotis Kokoras.

There was a Special Mention for ten other works (in alphabetical order): Renzo Filinich Orozco (PER)/Convergent PointsElliot Hernandez (MEX)/RitualLisa-Maria Hollaus (AUT)/Brood, Helge Meyer (GER)/Noise Music, Paul Oehlers (USA)/Flux hammerChristopher Poovey(USA)/Forged Effervescence, Leah Reid (USA)/Reverie, Richard Scott (GBR)/Music floats upwards, Ryne Siesky (USA)/Wanton Hush, Pierre-Henri Wicomb (ZFA)/Evenly hovering.

The jury consisted of Kotoka Suzuki (Tokyo/Toronto), Reuben de Lautour (Christchurch), Jaime Oliver (Lima/New York) and Javier Hagen (Director Forum Wallis). The selected works will be performed on August 10 by the Swiss-Italian composer and sound engineer Simone Conforti (Biennale Musica Venezia, IRCAM Paris) as part of the Forum Wallis New Music Festival at Leuk Castle.

A total of 234 works from all continents were submitted. The large number of works that dealt with the immediate and far-reaching consequences of the corona pandemic was remarkable, as was the outstanding quality and thus also the numerical presence of Latin American composers, who made up a quarter of the 21 selected works.
 

The Forum Valais is an international festival for new music that was founded in 2006 and is usually organized by the Valais section of the International Society for New Music IGNM-VS over the long Whitsun weekend. This year, the 15th edition of the festival will take place at Leuk Castle from August 10 to 12 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Guest ensembles and soloists include Ensemble Modern, Lukas Ligeti, UMS 'n JIP, Hanspeter Pfammatter, Manuel Mengis, Lukas Huber, Roberto Domeniconi, Urban Mäder, Silke Strahl, Gerry Hemingway and the Hyper Duo.
 

In autumn 2020, the Culture Division of the Department of Education, Culture and Sport (BKS) commissioned a structural analysis of amateur cultural associations and clubs in the canton of Aargau. The aim of the study was to describe the situation of amateur culture in Aargau, to analyse the amateur cultural sectors organized in associations and clubs, to identify overarching connections and to identify both challenges and good development approaches.

To this end, the six most important associations in the amateur cultural sectors of wind music (Aargau Music Association), choir (Aargau Cantonal Singing Association), theater (Aargau Theater Association), traditional costume (Aargau Traditional Costume Association), yodeling (Northwestern Switzerland Yodeling Association, Aargau branch) and museums/collections (Aargau Museums and Collections Association) and their member associations were surveyed.

Most associations consider themselves to be well to very well anchored in the population. The majority of clubs rate their financial situation as satisfactory to stable, but fear a future deterioration due to the coronavirus pandemic and the continuing decline in membership. The latter is mostly due to difficulties in promoting young talent. Many clubs are finding it difficult to find younger members and suitable people for management positions. In most clubs, operational business plays a central role, while strategic issues tend to receive little attention. Many associations and clubs would very much welcome more intensive interdisciplinary cooperation.

More info:
https://www.ag.ch/de/aktuelles/medienportal/medienmitteilung/medienmitteilungen/mediendetails_168705.jsp