Lea Gersl is a graduate of the ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts) MAS program in Clinical Music Therapy. She was recognized for her Master's thesis submitted in June 2024 with the title Music therapy in the mainstream school. Children with externalizing and internalizing behavioural problems in music therapy excellent.

In it, Gersl sheds light on music therapy interventions and the development of children's expressive and communicative behavior. The study is embedded in an international research project and draws on the promotion of research networking by Sandra Lutz Hochreutener, the former head of the study program and mentor of the work.

The manuscript had probably been in the hands of the Petschek family in Aussig (Czech Republic) since the 1920s. As Jews, the Petscheks were persecuted by the Nazis and left their home in 1938. Their furniture, valuables and art collection were confiscated by the Nazi authorities. When the German authorities began to dispose of the art collection in 1942, the head of the music collection of the Moravian Museum in Brno, who was called in as an expert, managed to secure the manuscript for the museum.

After the war, the Petschek family searched for the manuscript - initially without success. When it was finally found, the communist government of what was then Czechoslovakia refused to hand over the autograph. In 2022, it was restituted to the Petschek descendants, who agreed to sell the manuscript to the Beethoven-Haus at the end of 2024 and make it permanently accessible to the public and researchers once again.

The purchase was made possible by a concerted campaign of public and private supporters. In addition to the Kulturstiftung der Länder, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the NRW-Stiftung, the Kunststiftung NRW, the Berthold Leibinger-Stiftung as well as committed private donors and the Beethoven-Haus Foundation were involved.

Antoine Torunczyk studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Lyon with Michel Henry and at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam with Alfredo Bernardini. He graduated in 2000 and in the same year won first prize at the Baroque Oboe Competition in Halle, Germany. He is currently principal oboist of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Concerto Copenhagen, and works with leading historically informed orchestras throughout Europe.

An active chamber musician, he is also co-founder of the Assemblée des Honnestes Curieux, winner of the Premio Bomporti Early Music Competition in Rovereto (Italy), and the baroque ensemble D!ssonanti, together with Sébastien Marq, Amandine Beyer, Javier Zafra, Tami Troman and Chiaopin Kuo.

He currently teaches historical oboe in the Early Music Department of the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMdP) and also annually at the Vielklang Summer Academy in Tübingen. He is webmaster of the Hautboy Companionan educational website about the historical oboe.

The The jury decided to award the project "Solo Brodo (Primordio e Parsimonia)" by interdisciplinary performance artist and musician Rebecca Solari, who lives in Biel, with 10,000 francs. The artist sheds light on her mother tongue - a Ticino dialect from the Blenio Valley - with her cultural language French, addressing the question of how people can communicate without speaking the same language. In general, her work deals with virulent contemporary issues such as identity and social norms.

The jury also awarded the Academy for Contemporary Music Switzerland 5,000 francs. The prize money will be used to support a bilingual music camp organized by the Academy, which will take place in Schwarzsee in August 2025. The musicians of "La Gustav" and the young people and children of "La Marlene", two projects of the academy, will rehearse across language and age boundaries for a performance at the 3rd "Lac Noir Schwarzsee Festival".

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Vollenwyder will step down as Chairman of the Tonhalle-Gesellschaft Zürich AG at the Annual General Meeting on January 29, 2025 after eleven years. Hedy Graber, who headed the Society & Culture Directorate at the Federation of Migros Cooperatives for over 20 years until fall 2024, is standing for election by shareholders as President.

The Tonhalle-Gesellschaft Zürich is a public limited company and the sponsor of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. The honorary Board of Directors is made up of twelve members, five of whom are representatives of the City and Canton of Zurich and two of whom are staff representatives.

Vsevolod Zavidov was born in Moscow in 2005 and began his musical education at the age of four. Since autumn 2023, he has been studying with Nelson Goerner at the Haute école de musique de Genève, where he is completing a Master's degree in Specialized Musical Performance for Soloists.

The Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes is a joint initiative of the Lucerne Festival, the Conference of Swiss Music Universities (KMHS) and UBS. Each music academy was able to nominate a maximum of two candidates for the semi-final, which took place at the end of October at the Bern University of the Arts. In addition to Valentin Gloor and Michael Haefliger, the jury included the cellist and former winner of the Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes Sol Gabetta as well as Xavier Dayer (Zurich University of the Arts, Director of the Department of Music), Rico Gubler (Bern University of the Arts, Head of Music) and Noémie Robidas (Haute École de Musique Vaud Valais Fribourg, Directrice Générale), who represented the Swiss music academies.

Leonidas Kavakos has been giving regular violin masterclasses at the Basel School of Music for many years. Born in Athens in 1967, he began playing the violin at the age of five. He studied with Stelios Kafantaris at the conservatory in his home town and with Josef Gingold at Indiana University. In 1985, Kavakos won the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki, and in 1988 he won the Naumburg Violin Competition in New York and the Premio Paganini in Genoa. In 1991, he received the Gramophone Concerto of the Year Award for his world premiere recording of the Sibelius Concerto in the original version, which had long been considered unplayable.

During a trial run from January 2025, the Klangwelt Foundation will test the premises and processes, such as the parallel use of all rooms and the ticket system. If necessary, experts will adjust the acoustics of the rooms, according to the canton's press release. The building will officially open in May 2025 at a total cost of 23.3 million Swiss francs. Klangwelt Toggenburg is financing CHF 1 million of this. The remaining costs for the canton amount to CHF 22.3 million. The Klangwelt Toggenburg Foundation is the operator of the Klanghaus.

The wooden building comprises four acoustically unique sound rooms. There are also two outdoor stages for outdoor music experiments. As a sound workshop with unique acoustics, the Klanghaus is available to both professional musicians and amateurs for rehearsals, courses, workshops and symposia.

After studying recorder, piano and double bass, Joubert-Caillet studied viola da gamba with Paolo Pandolfo at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where he also studied baroque improvisation with Rudolf Lutz. He was awarded first prize and the audience prize at the international chamber music competition in Bruges. After teaching at the Conservatoire de Nancy and the Musikschule Konservatorium Bern, he holds the position of lecturer for viola da gamba at the Conservatoire de la Ville de Luxembourg.

François Joubert-Caillet has been director of the ensemble L'Acheron since 2009, with which he performs in various formations, with a focus on the viol consort. His CDs have been released by Ricercar-Outhere, and the complete recording of Marin Marais' Pièces de Viole was awarded a Diapason d'Or, a Choc de Classica and an Echo Klassik. Joubert-Caillet also founded Albus Fair Editions in 2021, an "independent, fair and environmentally friendly publishing house", with which he published his first work for viola da gamba and electronics, Isola.

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.

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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.