Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The digital audio broadcasting (DAB) offer in Switzerland is slowly but surely growing. Three new licenses have been granted for the French-speaking area. They go to Radio Rhône SA, Radio Fribourg/Freiburg SA and Soprodi Sàrl. Rhone/Vertical will carry music with sports and in particular mountain sports programes, Fribourg plans to offer music with cultural and educational programmes, while Soprodi will focus on French language music with programmes on sustainable development.
Seven other applicants were either refused or withdrew during the application period, which opened in 2008, for not meeting the criteria set by Ofcom, the federal communications office.
St Gottard Pass, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Lead singer Steve Lee of the Swiss rock group Gotthard was mourned Saturday 16 October by his family, close friends and a crowd of an estimated 3,000 fans, at the Gotthard Pass. Lee died 5 October in a freak biking accident near Las Vegas, in the US.
The mourners made the trek to the pass, at just over 2,100 metres, despite inhospitable weather, with wind and rain and snow.
Link to article in swissinfo.
Video, TSR television
At the Holy Trinity Church, in Geneva.
The Choral Group intends to give the entire retiring collection to ESCA – the English-Speaking Cancer Association.
Location: 14 rue du Mont Blanc, Geneva
Link out: https://rhawking.web.cern.ch/rhawking/htcweb/
Date: 16 Oct 2010
Start time: 20:00
Music, second-hand clothing, coctails and more. Read all details in Geneva Living.
Location: Place des Volontaires 2, Geneva
Link out: http://genevalunch.com/geneva-living/2010/10/05…
Date: 8 Oct 2010
By the Geneva chamber music orchestra in favor of the Vaud Red Cross.
Information: +41 (0) 844 677 677.
Location: Morges, Vaud
Link out: http://mailto:beausobre@morges.ch
Date: 8 Oct 2010
First-ever principal guest conductor
8 October: Neeme Jaervi named music, artistic director
Kazuki Yamada (photo, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande / Yves Petit)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Kazuki Yamada, young star on the international orchetral concert circuit, has been named the first-ever principal guest conductor with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR) since the orchestra was created in 1918. He has signed a three-year contract to lead the orchestra for 10 concerts a year, a minimum of five weeks, starting in September 2012.
The maestro was approached by the orchestra’s foundation in June 2010 to take on the role of music director, but, the OSR said Wednesday 22 September, “After a thorough reflection on the various requirements of this position, the OSR Foundation, together with Maestro Kazuki Yamada, have mutually agreed on a collaboration” with the 31-year-old conductor as principal guest conductor.
Yamada makes his debut with several major international orchestras during the 2010-2011 season: in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall, in Paris debut with the Orchestre de Paris and in Berlin with Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
The foundation also announced Wednesday that it is proposing Neeme Jaervi as artistic and music director. The orchesta’s musicians will vote on the proposal at a meeting 8 October. (update 8 October: the nomination was accepted and Jaervi will lead the orchestra starting January 2011.
If approved, Jaervi would also start a three-year contract in September 2012. Jaervi, born in Estonia, is just starting a new contract in September 2010 as music director of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. He has been a guest conductor in major orchestras around the world and has appeared several times with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
Stimmreise at the Chateau de Chillon, Switzerland, September 2010
(videos) Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A revolution is taking place in the Swiss Alps and it’s anything but quiet, as the Stimmreise band/quartet showed Thursday night 9 September at the Chateau de Chillon near Montreux. The foursome, created earlier in 2010 in its present form, played an astonishing repertoire of music that defies classification, starting with the odd variety of instruments: bass, guitar, clarinet and yodeller. Nadja Raess is a yodeller who is also a classically trained singer from the Zurich Conservatory, and while she sometimes performs and sings traditional yodel music, this was billed as an evening of classic wordless yodels with modern variations for yodel as an instrument, her specialty.
The show is only two weeks old and there was a sense as the audience left that we were lucky to be there at the start of something very special. Their first CD will be out in November 2010. It didn’t hurt to have the performance at the Chillon Castle as the sun set over Lake Geneva, one of a series of concerts there.
Stimmreise in concert, Chillon Castle, Switzerland, September 2010
The result was breathtaking in every sense. Raess has a beautiful pure voice with impressive power that easily makes it the dominant instrument when she opts for that. At times it was difficult for the ear to separate clarinet from yodel, with exquisite harmonies. Equally impressive was the variety of music, ranging from a handful of traditional yodel songs, which some in the audience were clearly expecting, to disonant jazzy pieces as well as melodic, well-crafted quartet music closer to Brahm’s lullabies than mountain hullabaloo stuff. There was a bit of that, too, foot-stomping and all, with singer Raess tossing off her very high heels to romp barefoot on the stage for the rest of the show.
Stimmreise is a group of seriously professional performers who, without saying a word all evening, not even hello, held the audience in the palm of its hand. The band alternately enchanted with its music and its antics, from the moment they came out looking like somber extras from The Blues Brothers to the sketch where Raess, looking bored while the boys suddenly have a madcap jam session, puts her fingers in her mouth and lets rip a piercing whistle that would make any 11-year-old lad jealous. The others in the group: Dani Haeusler, clarinet, Marc Scheidegger, guitar, and Richard Hugener, e-bass.
Sting to sing in Geneva, one day only.
Location: Stade de Geneve
Link out: http://www.geneva-arena.ch/event_details.php?ei…
Date: 26 Sep 2010
The Sweet Child O’Mine guys in Geneva for a one-eve show.
Location: Stade de Geneve
Link out: http://www.geneva-arena.ch/event_details.php?ei…
Date: 16 Sep 2010
The ville est a vous returns, the first neighborhood partying is Jonction.
Location: Jonction, Geneva
Link out: http://www.ville-ge.ch/culture/vav/qJonction.html
Start date: 4 Sep 2010
End date: 5 Sep 2010
Champagne, music and all in a cosy environment.
Location: Nyon, Vaud
Link out: http://www.brigitte-ravenel.ch/index-fr.php?pag…
Start date: 26 Aug 2010
End date: 28 Aug 2010
An evening of jazz at the Hermance beach. Additional buses will be scheduled after midnight to take concert-goers back to Geneva.
Location: Hermance, Geneva
Link out: http://www.jazzsurlaplage.ch/2010/news_items/
Date: 14 Aug 2010
Start time: 17:00
Each summer, the For Noise Festival takes place in the Pully heights.
The name of the event gives you an idea of the decibels involved and the screaming metal on offer. However, this isn’t the whole truth. Over three nights, the festival’s three stages buzz with today’s alternative music, while the movie room explores the creative dialogues that go on between DJs and VJs.
Location: Lausanne, Vaud
Link out: http://www.fornoise.ch/
Start date: 19 Aug 2010
End date: 21 Aug 2010
Today, musical improvisation is inevitably associated with jazz and the performance of classical music. But each summer for the past decade, a Lausanne festival has been reminding us that, 100 or 200 years ago, improvisation also ruled in this area.
Concerts (at the Conservatory and in various churches) and courses bring this pleasant music back into fashion, with musicians sometimes calling upon their listeners to suggest challenges or themes!
Location: Lausanne, Vaud
Link out: http://www.fmil.org/
Start date: 15 Aug 2010
End date: 18 Aug 2010
RSR public radio and Couleur 3 provide podcasts and downloads of several of the concerts
Crosby Stills & Nash were among the big hits at Paleo (photo: © 2010 Paléo / Boris Soula)
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – And the bands played on! The Paleo Festival closed Sunday, yet again, on a happy note for its organizers, a sold-out event, no major crises, and generally happy concert-goers. The only damp notes were problems with parking lot closures when heavy rains fell at the end of last week, just as the five-day event reached its peak, but given the encouragement the green festival gives to using trains and buses to reach it, this might have a positive result, prompting more people to reconsider driving in 2011.
Many of the concerts are available online from RSR and Couleur 3, depending on rights negotiations with the performing artists.
Big hits for 2010 were old favourites, starting with Crosby Stills & Nash, Johnny Clegg and Iggy Pop, but the Tribune de Geneve argues that hip-hop was the real star this year, performing in every corner of the festival.
The mix of music pulled in 230,000 fans, according to Paleo.
Paleo in 2011: mark your calendars now, 19-24 July.
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – The Montreux Jazz Festival closed its doors Saturday night 17 July with 85 percent of all tickets sold and 23 of 33 main concerts sold out. Film-maker Roman Polanski made his first public appearance since he was freed from house arrest July, to watch his wife perform, Emmanuelle Seigner.
The 2011 jazz festival will run from 1-16 July.
Each summer, 10 violin-piano duos from around the world participate in master classes under Pierre Amoyal (violin) and Bruno Canino (piano).
At the Conservatory, a masters’ concert ushers in this week of teaching. The public is invited to attend these outstanding performance lessons, which conclude with the Academy’s concert, during which seven duos perform a movement from a sonata they have worked on during the courses, and the laureates’ concert, during which the three best duos perform a sonata.
Location: Lausanne, Vaud
Link out: http://www.academie-lausanne.com/
Start date: 1 Aug 2010
End date: 7 Aug 2010
By Bob Evans
Audio files at the end
The beauty of a collision: first proton-proton collisions, Cern, 16 December 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - Did you go over the Moon when you first heard Mike Oldfield’s “Music of the Spheres”? Did you go into ecstasies over Gustav Holst’s “Planets” Suite? Well, soon you can fall in love with the Higgs Boson Sonata, the Dark Matter Cantata and perhaps eventually the Black Hole Symphony—or perhaps something like them.
Such works could emerge in the not too distant future from the unlikeliest of sources, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at the Cern particle physics research centre near Geneva. Scientists there are converting the cosmic phenomena they are chasing through the huge underground machine into music in their state-of-the-art computers.
To do it, they use a technique that changes pure scientific data gathered from the LHC experiments into sound, says physicist Lily Asquith.
The detectors in the machine, which is probing the origins of the universe, can reconstruct the pathway of the particles after they are smashed together at near light-speed and calculate how much energy each leaves along its path.
“If you use the right software, you can get really nice music out of the particle tracks,” explains Asquith, who works on the LHC’s Atlas, one of its six detectors, and was one of the originators of what is called the LHC sound project.
A key aim of the enterprise is to help promote awareness among the wider public of the work of Cern, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, and especially the high-cost LHC experiment.
With this in mind, the project team has launched a chatty website dubbed “The Sounds of Science” with a nod to the 1960s hit song by Simon and Garfunkel, “Sounds of Silence.”
“We want everyone to be able to share in the wonder and excitement of what we are doing, and this seems a good way of showing the awe-inspiring magnificence of it all,” says Asquith.
The Verbier Festival Orchestra conducted by its Music Director Charles Dutoit with soloist Yuja Wang opens this year’s Verbier Festival. The Orchestra goes on to give concerts under Semyon Bychkov, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Daniel Harding. Other Festival highlights include the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra and Gábor Takács-Nagy, two recitals by Evgeny Kissin, an unprecedented cycle of Schubert’s piano sonatas by Elisabeth Leonskaja, as well as appearances by Martha Argerich, Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, Gidon Kremer, Hélène Grimaud and many many more artists. The closing concert on 1 August features Richard Strauss’ opera Salome sung by some of the greatest names in opera and conducted by Valery Gergiev.
Location: Verbier, Valais
Link out: http://www.verbierfestival.com/
Start date: 16 Jul 2010
End date: 1 Aug 2010
Some 45,000 enthusiastic fans made their way to last year’s event. Indeed, the journey itself proves just how different this festival is. Because the only way to get up the Gurten is on a funicular called the Gurtenbahn – unless you are a sports freak, that is, and prefer to make the journey on foot.
More than 60 Live-Acts and 60 DJs from Pop, Rock, Punk, Electro, Funk, Soul, R’n'B, HipHop, Country, Singer-/Songwriter and Blues are on the program. In addition to bands from all over the world, the Gurten Music Festival will also feature some famous Swiss musicians as well. The Waldbühne will be reserved exclusively for the crème de la crème of the Swiss music scene.
Location: Bern
Link out: http://www.gurtenfestival.ch/index_en.aspx
Start date: 15 Jul 2010
End date: 18 Jul 2010
Cran-sur-Nyon’s “little” festival enjoys lakefront, good music, great crowds
It’s the music festival that kicks off the season on the shores of Lake Geneva, festive and on a human scale, with four nights, 180 artists and 32,000 people enjoying lakefront music. The big ones, Paleo and Montreux, follow and pull in thousands more fans but Caribana remains a comfortable size and a relaxed way to ease into summer. It opens tonight, Wednesday 9 June to sellout crowds for the Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday concerts.
The festival was started 20 years ago by a group of friends and even today it has a team of 30 volunteers to keep things on a human scale and to keep down costs. By 2002 it had grown to 20,000 fans and in 2005 a fourth night of music was added.
Sunday the party scene is thrown wide open to families with children, with a busy day of activities, musical and otherwise, including chess lessons, juice-making and quiet reading corners. Caribana 2010 closes with a bang or two at 17:30 when balloons are released from the festival grounds.
Caribana
- tickets
- programme
- Sunday with children
- transport: use public transport, much of it free and CHF10 for buses to Geneva and Lausanne (with stops) if you show your festival ticket
Music concerts from classical to jazz or folklore.
The aim of Musique et Vie is to promote Human Rights, Youth and Peace through music. It supports and develops the musical
culture of the underprivileged in Switzerland and abroad.
Location: Geneva
Link out: http://www.genevalutheran.ch/esc/index.php?opti…
Start date: 24 Jun 2010
End date: 7 Aug 2010
Fleamarket, theater, music and more in Lausanne. Several dates.
Location: Lausanne, Vaud
Link out: http://www.animcite.ch/
Start date: 19 Jun 2010
End date: 21 Aug 2010
Hundreds of performers. Listing for Chene Bourg.
Location: Chene Bourg, Geneva
Link out: http://www.chene-bourg.ch
Date: 19 Jun 2010
Funky jazz trumpet, 22:00-05:00
Location: Le Chat Noir, Carouge
Link out: http://www.chatnoir.ch/search.php?date=2010-06-04
Date: 4 Jun 2010
Title: Concert: Brooklyn Funk Essentials
Location: Carouge
Link out: Click here
Description: Only Geneva presentation of the Brooklyn Funk Essential band, a pretty cool reggae meets ska and jazz from Brooklyn, New York.
Date: 2010-06-06
Dizu Plaatjie, Paleo 2010 (photo: ©2010 Patrick Lee Thorp/Paleo)
Paleo goes back to its roots with Crosby, Stills & Nash
Festival beats the World Cup with its own Southern Africa lineup, headed by white Zulu Clegg
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Tickets go on sale for reduced prices starting at midday 21 April, online, for the next Paleo Festival.
And the lineup is now out, featuring some old favourites and hot new talent: Indochine, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jacques Dutronc, Iggy and the Stooges, M, Jamiroquai, NTM, Alain Souchon, N*E*R*D, Diam’s, Johnny Clegg.
Don’t forget to enter the competition for free tickets to the six-day festival, one of the liveliest events of the Lake Geneva region summer!
Title: Lucerne Easter festival
Location: Lucerne
Link out: Click here
Description: The Lucerne Festival at Easter opens with Claudio Abbado conducting the Sinfónica de la Juventud Venezolana, the unique South American youth orchestra.
Start Date: 2010-03-19
End Date: 2010-03-28
Title: Hindi Sahara speaks of love
Location: Nyon, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: Sahara sings rock ballads, soul from the desert and blues.
Date: 2010-02-19
Title: Rockabilly music and dancing
Location: Gland, Vaud
Description: At Gland’s community center.
Call for information:
+41 22 364 1526.
Start Time: 20:00
Date: 2010-02-06
