Swiss Music Prizes by the Federal Office of Culture and Swiss Music Awards 2022
The “Swiss music prizes” is a collection of awards handed out each year by the „Federal Office of Culture“ to celebrate the achievements of artists and composers from all corners of the Swiss music world.
The Swiss Grand Award for music 2022, decided upon by a jury consisting of seven music specialists representing the various styles of music important to Switzerland, is the highest official accolade a musician can receive in Switzerland. It comes with a cool CHF 100’000 in cash. This year’s winners are Yello, aka Boris Blank and Dieter Meier.
Only rarely does commercial success go hand in hand with radical experiment. Boris Blank and Dieter Meier are amongst the very few Swiss artists who have managed this feat. Electronic music was still in its infancy when Blank, using tape, scissors and cellotape, began to fabricate his own “sound paintings”. With Meier arriving to add his own idiosyncratic style of proto-rap to the music, the Yello sound was born. Their working method hasn’t changed over the forty years of their collaboration: Blank, for months on end, weaves his magic in the studio, to which Meier adds his verbal tricks at the very end. Hits like «I Love You», «The Race» und «Vicious Games» travelled around the world. Meier’s «Pinball Cha-Cha» video was acquired by the New York Museum of Modern Art. Today, Yello are as busy and creative as ever. Their latest album, “Point” (2020) once again reached the peak of the Swiss charts.
In all, eleven acts are awarded a Swiss music prize. Apart from the top award, seven more acts are supported with a cheque of CHF 40’000 each. Additionally, there are three recipients of a “Special Award”, receiving CHF 25’000 each. Several of these have enjoyed the support of Swiss Music Export.
Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp
The hydra-like ensemble from Geneva formed by multi-instrumentalist Vincent Bertholet a decade and a half ago has travelled the world with their riotous assemblage of folk, jazz, cajun and Texas swing sounds with hefty dollop of punk power thrown in.
The list of projects involving drummer extraordinaire Hnatek is long. It includes the Erik Truffaz Quartet and pianist Tigram Hamasyan, who records for Nonesuch Records. He plays with a number of other bands, including his own Arthur Hnatek Trio and SWIMS, an exploration between acoustic improvisation and functional dance music.
Raphaël «Ripperton» Gros is one of the most innovative techno and house producers around. Apart from releasing five influential solo albums, he has worked with the likes of DJ Koze, Isolée, Alex & Stephane, Laurent Garnier, and Radiohead.
The other recipients of this award are percussionist Fritz Hauser, pianist Simone Keller, music theatre pioneer Daniel Ott, and the multi-facetted singer, Marina Viotti.
Our dear friend “Duex”, meanwhile, has been handed one of the special awards for his tireless work running the legendary Bad Bonn venue deep in the Fribourg countryside, a place Cat Power, for one, has cited as her favourite venue ever. Bad Bonn also hosts the yearly Bad Bonn Kilbi, a bijou festival that regularly hosts the best of the newest acts around. For the record, the next edition of Bad Bonn Kilbi is scheduled for Friday, 3 June – Sunday, 5 June. Needless to say, it has been sold out for quite some time.
The remaining two special awards go to AMR and Volksmusiksammlung Hanny Christen (Mülirad-Verlag). L’Association pour l’encouragement de la Musique improvise (AMR) was founded in 1973 in Geneva to support improvised music. The organisation now runs its own club, several rehearsal spaces, and a comprehensive workshop programme. Hanny Christen (1899 – 1976) was Switzerland’s version of Cecil Sharp in England, a collector of folk songs passed from generation to generation by word – or rather: song – of mouth. Today, the collection contains well over 10’000. It was published in 2002 in its entirety by the Mülirad-Verlag.
The „Swiss music prizes“ award ceremony will take place take place on 16 September 2022 in the presence of Federal Councillor Alain Berset in Pully.
On 25 May the Swiss Music Awards took place at the Bosshard Arena in Zug. It was the 15th time the awards were held by and for the Swiss music industry and they came with some interesting surprises. Despite a slender output that does not yet include a full album, 19-year-old pop voice Joya Marleen carried off no fewer than three awards (“Best Female Act”, “Best Hit” for her track “Nightmare”, and “SRF3 Best Talent” national radio’s award for the most promising newcomer. Red Brick Chapel-signed indie quartet Mnevis received the “Artist Award” which is based solely on the votes of fellow musicians; this is what we wrote about Mnevis in our February 2021 newsletter: “Combining conventional instruments with electronics in a Radiohead-sort-of-way, and a mellow-voice raconteur at the microphone, Mnevis sound fresh as the proverbial daisy.” Another surprise was the triumph of Brandão-Faber-Hunger in the category “Best Album”. Geneva-based rapper Danitsa won in the category of “Best Act Romandie” (best French Swiss act), and the man with the huge voice, Zian, was named “Best Newcomer”.
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