Swiss Contemporary Music
Michael Wertmüller, a portrait by Gabrielle Weber
Michael Wertmüller’s music sounds anarchic, virtuosic and highly energetic. From the shortest compositions to immersive, expansive music theatre, his works combine approaches from jazz and contemporary music, always dramatic, intense and full on. A portrait by Gabrielle Weber
Continue reading “Making utopias come true: composer Michael Wertmüller”
Jessie Cox is many things: drummer and composer, Assistant Professor at Harvard University and Swiss citizen with roots in Trinidad and Tobago. In his music and research, he refers to Afrofuturism and travels through earthly and cosmic spaces. His first book will be published in February 2025.
Friedemann Dupelius
“Space is the Place” is what Sun Ra declared on his 1973 album by the same name. The African-American composer and bandleader not only dreamed of space as an imaginary destination – for him, it was also a metaphor for a new and progressive world in which black people would be better off than on Earth. Jessie Cox takes Sun Ra literally: his piece Enter the Impossible Cosmos leads us through a musical universe. He developed it in 2022 for the Sun Ra Arkestra, which continues to exist more than 30 years after the death of its founder.
Jessie Cox grew up in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland and now lives in Boston (USA) / © Adrien H. Tillmann Continue reading “Composer Jessie Cox: with music through the planets”
Marc Kilchenmann doesn’t like to repeat himself, what he appreciates is delving deeper when he takes on a subject. For his piece Murhabala, he focussed the women’s struggle for freedom in Iran. In the musical form, overtone and undertone structures meet and clash, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in dissonant frictions.
A portrait by Friederike Kenneweg
Since the 2024/2025 season, Composer Andreas Eduardo Frank is the new Artistic Director & Co-Director of Basel’s Gare du Nord, one of the most important venues for contemporary music in Switzerland. Frank’s own works are multimedia, playful, humorous and often more political than one might think at first glance. A portrait by Jaronas Scheurer
Continue reading “Andreas Eduardo Frank: Collaborative composing and meta-composing”
Nora Vetter, Lucerne based viola player and composer, benefited in 2023-2024 of the Migros Culture Percentage’s Double Classic network. Each year, this mentoring platform enables several musicians to work on a specific project in depth and supported by a coach. On this occasion, we look back at her creative process and her impressions after a year of coaching, which led to the production of a new work for solo drums. A Portrait by Alexandre Babel.
Portrait Nora Vetter zVg. Nora Vetter Continue reading “Nora Vetter / Performative contexts”
Young jazz saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve (*1995) was awarded one of this year’s BAK music prizes. Svosve does not commit himself to any particular style, switching agilely between free jazz, ambient, noise and progressive rock. However, his musical practice is firmly rooted in the jazz tradition.
Continue reading “Tapiwa Svosve grinds saxophone sounds into the sewage system”
Gabrielle Weber: Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival awarded music prize
LUFF, Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival, has been programming experimental music to accompany a selected film programme in Lausanne since 2002. This year, the festival received one of the special music prizes from the Federal Office of Culture (BAK). A few weeks before the start of this year’s edition, I met three members of the management team at the new Lausanne cultural centre Pyxis, right next to the cathedral in Lausanne’s old town, which is where LUFF’s offices are located. A conversation with Thibault Walter and Dimitri Meier, artistic directors of the music programme, and Marie Klay, managing director.
Continue reading “LUFF: Music award for Noise from Lausanne”
A portrait of cellist Sol Gabetta by Florian Hauser
Sol Gabetta, cellist, cosmopolitan and Swiss by choice, was awarded the Grand Prix suisse de musique 2024
Florian Hauser
What does it take for a global career in classical music? Talent, luck, a strong personality and last but not least, the willingness to get involved in teamwork, i.e. working with an artist agency, press agency and record label. Sol Gabetta does it all.
Continue reading “Sol Gabetta awarded the Grand Prix Suisse de musique 2024”
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri’s works are fascinating for seeing and hearing. Her pieces, which consists of a variety of objects, sound installations and performances, surprise visitors and listeners with the simplicity and elegance of their functioning. During my meeting with the artist, we discussed the intimate relationship between objects and sound.
Continue reading “Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri and the independence of objects”
Just beautiful concerts? No. At the Lucerne Festival, an academy looks after young musicians and theis interests, be it instrumentalists, composers and/or conductors. The Lucerne Festival Academy brings them all together. Festival director Michael Haefliger and composer and conductor Pierre Boulez came up with the idea for this academy 20 years ago.
Benjamin Herzog
It’s a hot saturday afternoon by the Lake Lucerne and the Lucerne Festival has been running at full speed for a good week now. This applies not only to the dense sequence of concerts, debut recitals and free formats for visitors in front of and next to Jean Nouvel’s emblematic Culture and Convention Centre KKL. The first three weeks of the festival are very intense for the participants of the Lucerne Festival Academy as well. 110 in number, from 30 different countries: Instrumentalists, composers and conductors. Some of them will be presenting the fruits of their first phase of work in a concert this Saturday afternoon at the KKL. Pierre Boulez’ enormously difficult Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna for eight instrumental groups, Wolfgang Rihm’s In-Schrift and a piece by Lisa Streich called Ishjärta, which translates “iron heart” in English and in which the composer attempts to express two different emotional states simultaneously.
Continue reading “Linked to the future – Lucerne Academy’s 20th anniversary”