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A nice surprise: The Federal Office of Culture honors the Zurich duo Yello for their achievements in the field of electronic pop music. Cultural mediators are also honored for the first time.
Dieter Meier and Boris Blank have achieved what most people can only dream of. They have created a globally recognized brand. Their finely devised soundscapes and the visionary imagery of their visual appearances in video clips also reach an audience beyond the clubs.
Inspired by jazz
Both Meier and Blank were active in the alternative scene at the end of the 1970s, sometimes producing punk, sometimes experimental.
Legend:
You won’t find these two a second time: the Swiss musician duo Yello with Dieter Meier and Boris Blank. Their band name is a play on words and stands for “a yelled hello”.
EPO/JOERG CARSTENSEN
As a source of their musical inspiration, both give surprising answers. Blank was enthusiastic about Herbie Hancock’s album “Sextant” and bought an ARP Odyssey synthesizer like the one Hancock used. Meier’s love of music was sparked by free jazz heroes such as John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy.
What Yello made of it is pop music with a strong recognition character. In addition, Blank’s soundscapes are in no way inferior to the works of contemporary composers of electronic music from the electronic music department in terms of their attention to detail and plasticity. With the difference that the production is finalized according to pop standards.
An important innovation
By creating the category of special prizes, the jury is now able to also award prizes to institutions and cultural mediators. This is an extension that follows a very understandable logic. The folk music collection Hanny Christen or the Geneva AMR are organizations that have had an enormous influence on the Swiss music landscape.
Their continuous work absolutely deserves recognition in this context. This also applies to the festival curator Daniel «Duex» Fontana, who offers a very personal and extremely exciting selection with his festival Bad-Bonn-Kilbi away from the big centers.
Legend:
Daniel «Duex» Fontana is festival curator and has lured world-famous bands to Düdingen. For this he was honored with the special prize.
KEYSTONE/Anthony Anex
Pushing boundaries with music
In this round of Swiss music awards, musicians were honored who stand for work beyond genre boundaries. The two percussionists Arthur Hnatek from Geneva and Fritz Hauser from Basel should be mentioned as representative of this.
Although they stand in a long tradition of outstanding Swiss drummers, they have always broken new ground themselves, which skilfully and creatively elude stylistic categories.
The same can be said of the pianist Simone Keller or the singer Marina Viotti. Both indulge in the art of “eating about the Hague” with relish and are never averse to interdisciplinary experiments.
And what could be nicer for a jury than to evade the filling of given templates. Especially when such substantial sums can be awarded.