Dawidiuk has been studying orchestral conducting with Johannes Schlaefli and Christoph-Mathias Mueller and piano with Till Fellner at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) since 2020, as well as organ with Martin Sander at the Basel Music Academy. He is currently a scholarship holder of the German Foundation for Musical Life and the Conducting Forum of the German Music Council for top young conductors. He was recently appointed Associate Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. He will take over the position from the current 2024/25 season.

The Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation awards a special prize to performers and/or composers for particularly outstanding achievements in their fields as part of its funding priorities. The prize is awarded exclusively by a selection committee. Applications are not possible. The Hamburg-based foundation was established in 1963 by Oscar and Vera Ritter and took up its activities after the death of the founders in 1967.

The contributions in the jazz, rock, pop category go to Domi Chansorn, Gini Jungi and Shuyue Miao Zhao. Tomas Korber will be supported in the classical/new music category. Asia Ahmetjanova receives the Half Year of Work. In all five sponsorship categories, a total of 21 artists and one collective will receive work years and awards totaling CHF 702,000.

The award for special cultural services is also presented. It goes to Karen Roth-Krauthammer, President of the cultural association Omanut, Forum for Jewish Art and Culture.

The prerequisite for the takeover of the service contract is that the voters of the City of Bern approve the 2025 budget on November 24, 2024. This budget also includes the funds for Konsibern. The music school's services are to be compensated with a sum of around CHF 4.3 million for 2025. This includes additional costs of CHF 282,000. These are due to an increase in the number of students, an increase in teachers' salaries and higher rental costs.

The music school was founded in 1858 by the Bernese Music Society BMG. With the founding of the Bern University of the Arts HKB in 2000, the general music school department of the former conservatory was transformed into an independent institution and the Bern Conservatory Music School Foundation was established as a competence center for amateur music-making.

The first prize is endowed with CHF 20,000, the second with CHF 12,000. A third prize was not awarded. Chelsea Marilyn Zurflüh was also awarded all but two of the special prizes, including the audience prize and the orchestra prize.

Chelsea Marilyn Zurflüh grew up in Pieterlen. She completed her Master of Arts at the Bern University of the Arts with the highest grade. She has been a member of the International Opera Studio in Zurich since September 2021. She was first prize winner of the Marianne & Curt Dienemann Foundation Music Competition, winner of the Migros Culture Percentage Singing Competition, the Kiefer-Hablitzel/Göhner Music Competition and first prize winner of the Elvirissima Singing Competition. Most recently, she won the Haydn Competition in Rohrau.

Born in Riehen near Basel in 1960, Dominik Sackmann studied organ in Zurich from 1980-84 and musicology, church history and Latin philology in Basel and Bern. He was music editor at Radio DRS2 from 1988-1993. He has been managing director of the Christoph Delz Foundation since 1994. He heads the Institute for Music Research at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and teaches music history, performance practice and chamber music.

The Benemerenti Medal of Merit ("to the well-deserving") is a papal decoration for services to the Catholic Church. It is also known as the Bene merenti and Benemerenti Medal. It goes back to various traditions of papal awards that honored both civilian and military achievements. (Source: Wikipedia)

Androne-Nakanishi, who completed his Master's degree in Composition for Film, Theater and Media with André Bellmont in 2022, earned the award with the music for Toma Enache's film "Enescu, Skinned Alive." He studied in Bucharest at the National University of Music, at the Birmingham Conservatoire, at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris and in Zurich. He has won numerous national and international composition competitions, including the Grand Prize of the George Enescu Competition (2014), the Golden Eye Trophy of the Zurich Film Festival (2018) and the First Prize of the International Choral Composition Competition in Japan (2020).

Launched in 2012, the International Sound & Film Music Festival (ISFMF) took place in the Croatian city of Samobor in 2024 and "makes audiovisual professions in the fields of music composition, sound design and sound mixing visible". It is founded and managed by Ozren K. Glaser, Tena Glaser and Željko Glaser and the managing director Marijana Knezoci.

Schmidt completed his doctorate at the FU Berlin in 1970 under Rudolf Stephan and subsequently worked on the Arnold Schönberg Complete Edition. He also obtained an organ diploma from the École normale de musique in Paris. After his habilitation and a professorship in Amsterdam, he held the Chair of Music History at the Technical University of Berlin from 1991 until his retirement as the successor to Carl Dahlhaus. From 1992 he was project manager of the Leipzig edition of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's works at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and from 1997 project manager of the Hanns Eisler Complete Edition.

Since 2018, the Heinrich Schütz Music Festival has awarded the prize to personalities, ensembles, facilities and institutions that "distinguish themselves through excellent artistic and scientific achievements and merits in the interpretation, lively communication and widespread dissemination of the oeuvre of Heinrich Schütz and the music of his time, as well as through an outstanding commitment to its sustainable preservation and promotion".

According to the city's press release, this marks the start of the next important phase on the way to modern theater operations and the new Lucerne Theater. Furthermore, the existing building is to be made operationally safe for the coming years with a loan of CHF 5 million.

The winning project "everywhere" by Zurich architects Ilg Santer envisages the expansion of the existing theater building with an extension on the west side. It was revised and optimized following criticism in recent months. In a new statement issued at the end of September 2024, the two Federal Commissions for the Protection of Nature and Cultural Heritage and for the Preservation of Historical Monuments acknowledged that the revision takes into account important points of the conservation objectives formulated in the 2019 report and that the project as a whole is compatible with the framework conditions.

After a temporary break from the stage Sophie Hunger will make its comeback from March 20 to 23, 2025. For one weekend, she will be designing Elbphilharmonie its own festivalShe sings her songs, which range between indie rock and poetic pop, together with an orchestra, and reads from her recently announced debut novel Waltz for nobodywhich will be released in spring 2025 - and will bring many musical friends to Hamburg.

Dino Brandão can also be heard in the Small Hall on the opening evening. He began his musical career as a street musician, celebrated success with the band Frank Power and released his first solo album "Self Inclusion" in spring 2024. After giving a celebrated trio concert with Sophie Hunger and Faber in the Grand Hall of the Elbphilharmonie in 2021, he is now returning with his new songs.

Julian Sartorius turns the Elbphilharmonie building into an instrument. Using sticks and mallets, the former drummer for Sophie Hunger elicits a wide variety of sounds from walls and objects during his "soundwalks"

According to a press release from the university, particular attention is paid to the career paths of conductors, which are closely linked to programming decisions. However, organizational variables such as repertoire, finances, personnel and institutional context factors such as intensity of competition and per capita income are also included in the study.

The data will not only be scientifically evaluated, but also made publicly accessible. The project thus offers "a sustainable research basis for further studies on the history of German orchestras and music", the university continues. The study will later be extended to other (European) countries.

The research project under the direction of Thomas Heinze and Mark Lutter (both from the University of Wuppertal) and in cooperation with Barbara Wiermann (Saxon State and Regional Library Dresden) is being funded by the German Research Foundation with around 800,000 euros over three years.

More info: https://www.uni-wuppertal.de/de/news/detail/forschungsprojekt/

Daniel Hug (Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK) and Sascha Ketelhut (University of Bern) have received the award for their publication "Sonic Shuttle Run: Leveraging Sound Design to Improve Affective Response and Performance in Maximal Exercise Tests". Hug is a sound design lecturer and works at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) at ZHdK, Sascha Ketelhut at the Institute of Sport Science at the University of Bern.

The "Sonic Shuttle Run" project investigates the use of detailed, independent sounds to increase athletic performance, motivation and maximum effort in sport. In a pilot study with 21 test subjects, different sound design variants and their effects on effort, emotional valence, flow and listening experience were examined. The results suggest that well-designed, evocative sounds can be beneficial in maximal effort tests, suggesting possible directions for further research into sound design strategies for sport.

More info: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678299.3678315

He is leaving at his own request for family reasons and due to the double burden of leading two professional orchestras, writes Konzert und Theater St. Gallen. He also holds the same position as in St. Gallen with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in Vilnius. Modestas Pitrenas has been Chief Conductor since 2018 . As Artistic Director Concert, he has also been involved in the management since the 2023/24 season and contributed to the operational development of the largest cultural institution in Eastern Switzerland.

Concert and St. Gallen will announce further information on the succession plan at a later date. The succession plan will be "planned in cooperation between the Board of Directors, the management and the orchestra and implemented as quickly as possible".

According to information from the Liechtestein Symphony Orchestra, Moritz Huemer was born in Feldkirch (Austria) in 1999 and grew up in Liechtenstein. He received his first cello lessons at the age of five from Josef Hofer at the Liechtenstein Music School. From 2015 to 2018, he was a junior student in Rafael Rosenfeld's class at the Basel Music Academy and at the same time attended grammar school in Feldkirch, where he graduated in 2018.

After four years studying with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt at the Franz Liszt School of Music in Weimar, he completed his bachelor's degree there in 2022. Since fall 2022, he has been studying with Jens Peter Maintz at the Berlin University of the Arts. Moritz Huemer has taken part in various masterclasses, including with David Geringas and Thomas Grossenbacher. He is also a scholarship holder of the International Music Academy in Liechtenstein and regularly takes part in the intensive weeks there.

The precarious financial situation of many cultural professionals in Switzerland has been known for some time and has been reminded once again due to the pandemic, writes Suisseculture. Due to the atypical forms of work common in the cultural sector, social security is insufficiently guaranteed.

Suisseculture Sociale, an umbrella organization of professional cultural workers, which provided emergency aid for cultural workers on behalf of the federal government during the Covid pandemic, is taking this as an opportunity to publish a report entitled Artists Take Action to launch an initiative. This includes a guide designed to provide cultural professionals with an introduction to social insurance, forms of business and employment law, as well as a national awareness campaign on social media.

The initiative is backed by the umbrella organizations Suisseculture and Suisseculture Sociale as well as the professional associations A*dS - Authors of Switzerland, ARF/FDS - Swiss Association of Film Directors and Screenwriters, Danse Suisse, GSFA - Groupement Suisse du Film d'Animation, SMV - Swiss Musicians' Association, SONART - Swiss Musicians, SSFV - Swiss Syndicate for Film and Video, t. - Theaterschaffen Schweiz and Visarte - Swiss Visual Arts Association.

Original article:
https://www.suisseculture.ch/?article=suisseculture_sociale_lanciert_initiative_artists_take_action