Resource orientation in everyday musician life

SMM - Prevention and health promotion in the music profession are key objectives of the Swiss Society for Music Medicine. A horn class and a presentation by Peter Knodt, lecturer in trumpet didactics at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), will introduce the topic at the Basel Music Academy. Knodt interviewed graduates and the team of horn teachers on the subject and sees inter-institutional cooperation, suitable individual skills profiles and shared artistic and pedagogical convictions as important factors for health and lasting satisfaction in everyday working life.

Knodt's discussions will be supplemented by Horst Hildebrandt, Director of the Swiss University Center for Music Physiology, with thoughts on self-help concepts that play a decisive role in prevention and therapy. He will show how helpful a mixture of perception training, tone regulation, strength building, movement, breathing and posture training can be - supplemented by techniques for rapid regeneration and muscle and fascia care.

At the symposium, Rheinfelden psychiatrist Andreas Schmid will show where professional musicians find strength and recovery when they reach their limits. He will discuss the sources of resilience that prevent crises of creativity, exhaustion or even mental illness. His lecture will cover the general principles of resilience and their practical significance in everyday life as a musician.

The Zurich music physiologist Oliver Margulies presents concepts for anchoring a music physiology program at music education institutions. They go back to the pilot project "Music Physiological Counseling" developed by Horst Hildebrandt at the German music school in Lahr in the 1990s. It developed into the music physiology teaching and counseling programs that exist today at the music academies in Zurich and Basel. The lecture provides an insight into two projects supervised by Margulies since 2010 at the Vorarlberg State Conservatory and at the Zurich Conservatory of Music. These include individual counselling for teachers and their students, teacher training, stage training, support for gifted students, access to research projects and specialized counselling at the ZHdK.

Elke Hofmann is a digitalization officer and lecturer in aural training at the Basel University of Music. She reflects on the digital transformation that makes information available anytime and anywhere. The rapidly changing new technologies require additional availability, flexibility and communicativeness and therefore also make demands that can be perceived as stressful.

Those taking part in the symposium can attend two workshops in addition to the presentations. One is entitled "Who moves - wins: making the most of physical resources with FBL Functional Kinetics". Music and movement physiologist Irene Spirgi Gantert will show how physical and psychosocial resources are closely interrelated. Strengthening physical resources involves dexterity as well as flexibility, endurance and strength exercises.

The second workshop is dedicated to "The joy of musical expression - Dispokinesis for musicians". Flutist Karoline Renner will show how the method offers solutions for pain, breathing problems, lack of success when practising and performance anxiety, among other things. The aim is to improve your own instrumental and artistic skills. The workshop gives a first impression of the connections between physical and mental posture and how self-esteem can be developed through self-observation.