According to the Schola Cantorum, Petr Skalka grew up in a family of musicians in Marienbad (Czech Republic). After studying at the conservatory in Pilsen, his interest in early music and historical performance practice led him to the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Christoph Coin, whose musical approaches had a decisive influence on him. Since 2001, he has taught as Christoph Coin's assistant at the Schola Cantorum in Basel. He also held a teaching position at the Nuremberg University of Music from 2011 to 2015.

Petr Skalka is a founding member of the ensemble Café Zimmermann, named after the Leipzig coffee house Zimmermann, where Johann Sebastian Bach and other famous musicians performed their works. He performs regularly with renowned chamber music ensembles throughout Europe and has participated in numerous recordings, which have been awarded several prestigious prizes.

From fall 2023, he will take over the teaching of cello in old scale at the FHNW-SCB and pass on his passion for the instrument, chamber music and historical performance practice. The application deadline for violoncello for the 2023/24 intake has been extended to March 1, 2023. Interested applicants should contact the SCB office (scb.hsm@fhnw.ch) in connection.

Karl Rechsteiner only bought an Appenzell dulcimer at the age of 50 and learned to play his dream instrument by himself. After retiring as an SBB train driver, he began a second career as a conductor of various choirs and as a musician. He enriched the repertoire of the Stubemusig with his own compositions.

He became famous when his Stubemusig created the soundtrack for the successful Swiss film "Herbstzeitlosen" with Stephanie Glaser and Heidi Maria Glössner. The highlights of his performances were the film premiere of "Herbstzeitlosen" with his music on the Piazza Grande in Locarno, the television interview with Kurt Aeschbacher and a performance with Gustav, Marc Sway and former Federal Councillor Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf at the 100th anniversary celebrations of Pro Senectute in Bern's Festhalle.

The historical-critical edition was begun in 1967. The most recent volume is number 27 with letters from 1875. If the edition were to be stopped now, the Bayreuth chapter would be almost completely missing, said Friedrich according to a report in the Neue Musikzeitung (nmz). The letters, which have not yet been edited, include the creation of Wagner's late so-called Regenerationsschriften, "which link his momentous racial anti-Semitism with his aesthetics of art religion and cultural theory", the petition states.

According to the University of Würzburg, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has funded the edition from 2006 to the end of 2022 as a long-term project with three staff positions, writes nmz. Further funding has been provided by the Upper Franconia Foundation in the form of printing cost subsidies for the edition volumes. The annotation of the outstanding letters has already been prepared. Around one million euros, spread over five years, are required for the remaining funding.

More info:
https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/vollendung-der-richard-wagner-briefausgabe

The new funding instrument contributes to the gradual implementation of the so-called "tip initiative". At the end of 2020, the voters of Basel voted in favor of at least five percent of the regular cultural budget - symbolically: the tip - flowing into Basel's active youth and alternative culture in all sectors.

An interdisciplinary jury examined 264 applications. Of these, 29 projects are currently being supported with one-off grants of between 5,000 and 20,000 francs. These include, for example, CHF 5,000 for a research project entitled "Experimental sound sculptures and musical instruments" by Gabriel Kleber, CHF 10,000 for a research project entitled "Musikalischer Gehör-Gang der Bilder" by the collective WG Utopia (Ingrid Adler and Roger Egli) and CHF 10,000 for "clash of patterns - hierarchical structures in music-making" by Mira Pozzi and Xenia Wiener.

More info:
https://www.bs.ch/nm/2023-mit-recherchebeitraegen-neue-ideen-entwickeln-pd.html

The streaming segment, which now accounts for 85% of the overall market, remains the growth driver, while sales of downloads and physical sound carriers continue to decline. The moderate growth in vinyl that has continued since 2010 took a break in 2022 and turned slightly negative. On the other hand, streaming short videos with music on social media is now also gaining financial importance.

Together with income from video streaming, namely YouTube, ad-financed music streaming now contributes CHF 24 million (11%) to the Swiss music market, surpassing physical CDs and vinyl (CHF 21.4 million) for the first time.

Original article:
https://www.ifpi.ch/post/schweizer-musikmarkt-2022-noch-gr%C3%B6sser-noch-digitaler-1

The support includes additional costs of CHF 213,000, which are due to an increase in the number of pupils and an increase in teachers' salaries, writes the city. The funds have already been approved by the voters of the city of Bern as part of the budget vote on November 27, 2022.

The Bern Music School was founded in 1858 by the Bern Music Society BMG. In 1892, professional musical training for teacher candidates was integrated, which led to the renaming of the school as the "Bern Conservatory of Music" in 1927. After the founding of the Bern University of the Arts HKB, the general music school department became an independent institution. The Bern Conservatory Music School Foundation was established. Since then, Konsibern has seen itself as a competence center for amateur music-making.

Cerha studied violin, composition and music education at the Vienna Academy of Music from 1946, as well as musicology, German studies and philosophy at the University of Vienna, where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1950 with a dissertation on the Turandot theme in German literature. While the public Viennese music scene was distanced from new musical trends in the post-war period, he was in early contact with the avant-garde underground scene of young painters and writers around the Art Club and the Schönberg Circle of the International Society for New Music (IGNM Austria).

In 1958, he founded the ensemble die reihe together with Kurt Schwertsik and his wife Gertraud Cerha. In the years that followed, this ensemble was to introduce Viennese and later international audiences to pieces from the Viennese School, the avant-garde and the entire classical modern period, gaining international recognition through this pioneering achievement. From 1959, he taught at the Vienna University of Music, where he held a professorship for composition, notation and interpretation of new music from 1976 to 1988. From 1994, he also worked with Klangforum Wien and served as its president until 1999.

In addition to his commitment to contemporary music, editing early music was a major concern of his. He was intensively involved with medieval music cultures and published violin sonatas by Heinrich Schmelzer as early as 1956.

Lume by Leonardo Silva, born in Brazil in 1989, will be honored with 60,000 francs. Masato Kimura from Japan, born in 1981, will receive ─ ~minus~IX 25,000 francs. The third prize will be split (CHF 7500 each) for Umbilical cord for Chamber Orchestra Japanese artist Nana Kamiyama (*1986) and chameleon by the South Korean Jinseok Choi (*1982).

In collaboration with the Paul Sacher Foundation, the Basel Composition Competition was held for the first time in 2017 under the direction of jury president Wolfgang Rihm. As part of the competition, ten to twelve compositions are nominated in a selection process and performed by the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra and the Basel Sinfonietta.

The current jury president is Michael Jarrell. For health reasons, Rebecca Saunders and Isabel Mundry were unable to serve on the jury this year. They were replaced by the Italian composer Luca Francesconi. The jury also included the composers Toshio Hosokawa and Andrea Scartazzini as well as Florian Besthorn, Director of the Paul Sacher Foundation.

Cortese was already working as a stage manager at the Lausanne Opera at the age of 19. He later worked as a director at the Grand Théâtre de Genève for eight years. From 2003, he held various artistic management positions at the Angers Nantes Opéra and the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy. He is currently artistic director of the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg.

The history of the Lausanne Opera dates back to the 1870s. In 1931, it was completely restructured and converted from a casino theater into a municipal theater. Between 1975 and 1976, the stage was modernized and the number of seats reduced to 960. In 2007, the theater had to be closed for fire safety reasons. It has been managed by Eric Vigié since 2005. He oversaw the renovation of the technical and administrative areas of the building, during which performances took place in the Salle Métropole and the Beaulieu Theater until the reopening in 2012.

Founded in 2007 by Thomas Sterchi and Marco Godat as a festival for singer-songwriters, Zermatt Unplugged has "grown into a much sought-after event for artists and music lovers alike", writes the canton of Valais. Every year, over a hundred concerts take place on a dozen stages in the village and on the surrounding mountain slopes over the five days of the festival. Last year, the festival attracted over 25,000 people to the Upper Valais vacation resort.

Internationally renowned musicians and bands perform in small groups, in tents, outdoors or in the festival's clubs. The festival's program is characterized by "versatility, quality and internationality". The "combination of acoustic music, iconic landscapes and the incomparable atmosphere at the foot of the Matterhorn" make the festival a unique musical experience in Europe.

In 2019, a research team was able to prove a connection between musical engagement and mental health problems for the first time in a large population study: Around 10,500 Swedish test subjects provided information about both their musical activities and their mental well-being. In addition, the data was linked to the Swedish patient register so that psychiatric diagnoses could also be evaluated. The result was that musically active people actually reported depression, burn-out and psychotic symptoms more frequently than those who did not make music. The results were published in the open access journal Scientific Reports.

The team subsequently expanded its research to include methods of molecular genetics. They discovered that genetic variants that influence mental health problems and those that influence musical engagement partially overlap. The results of this second study were recently published in the open access journal Translational Psychiatry.

More info:
https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/newsroom/news/news-artikel/article/ist-musizieren-gut-fuer-unsere-psyche.html

After holding positions at the China National Symphony Orchestra in Beijing, the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki and the Stadttheater Bern, among others, Cahn took over the direction of Opera Vlaanderen Antwerp/Ghent in 2009, where he was artistic director until 2019. He is also President of the European Music Theater Academy based in Vienna and is a guest lecturer at the University of Vienna and the Mozarteum Salzburg.

The opera house in Berlin-Charlottenburg, which was opened in 1912 and destroyed during the war, was reopened as the Deutsche Oper Berlin on September 24, 1961. Since then, it has been Berlin's largest and Germany's second largest music theater - and one of the most modern in Europe. The building, designed by architect Fritz Bornemann, has 1859 seats.

The current artistic director Dietmar Schwarz places an emphasis on contemporary music theater. Together with General Music Director Donald Runnicles, he also pursues the presentation of works by Benjamin Britten throughout the season.

In the 1970s, Pilleri founded the band Jammin' the Blues, with which he played numerous opening acts for greats such as Albert Collins, John Mayall and Eric Burdon. In the 1980s, he released his most successful albums on the renowned Polygram label. The highlight of his career was a performance at the Freedom Festival in Philadelphia in 1990 in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators, alongside giants such as Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bo Diddley, The Hooters and Richie Havens.

Pilleri last released his album "The Blues Never Sleeps" a few months ago, with which he was due to go on tour. He died unexpectedly at the age of 62. The musician, who never put himself in the public eye, was a typical musician's musician and was held in high esteem in the Bernese rock and blues scene, both personally and musically.

The five new lecturers in the Department of Music at Bern University of the Arts (HKB) are Chiara Samatanga (cello), Job ter Haar (cello), Philip Draganov (violin), Jonian Ilias Kadesha (violin) and Valeria Curti (bassoon). They will be present at the aptitude tests in spring to welcome new students.

Chiara Samatanga (née Enderle) is a member of the Carmina Quartet, Job ter Haar lives in Amsterdam. His ensembles include the Van Swieten Society. Philip A. Draganov studied at the Juilliard School in New York and the Zurich University of the Arts, among others. He is also active as a conductor. Jonian Ilias Kadesha has Greek-Albanian roots and lives in Berlin. He is co-founder of the Trio Gaspard. Valeria Curti has been solo bassoonist at the Musikkollegium Winterthur since the 2022/23 season.

Following Peter Kraut's year as interim head of the Department of Music, Rico Gubler took up the position of Head of Department this month. The Swiss saxophonist, composer and lawyer was previously President of the Musikhochschule Lübeck (MHL). He succeeds Graziella Contratto, who left the BUA at the end of January 2022 after almost twelve years of service in order to devote more time to her artistic work.