This focus on Marcel Vaid’s music is supported by the Fondation Suisa, which has been a partner of the International Film Music Competition for the past eight years. It promotes Swiss music creation across all genres by providing financial support for activities or by carrying out its own projects. It is the charitable music promotion foundation of the Suisa Co-operative of Music Authors and Publishers.
It receives its funding through an annual allocation of 2.5 per cent of Suisa’s revenue from performance and broadcasting rights in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein. This enables it to co-fund over 450 musical projects and creations each year.
So what does the Fondation Suisa have to do with the International Film Music Competition? A conversation with its director, Urs Schnell, sheds some light on the matter.
What is the Fondation Suisa’s aim in this partnership between the Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich?
The core mission of our foundation is to promote musical creativity and the works of Swiss composers – and film music plays an extremely important role in this. As a foundation, however, we have a rather limited reach in terms of communication and are therefore reliant on strong partners. And the combination of the ZFF and the Zurich Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich as active sponsors of this project is, of course, like winning the lottery for us! Not only in terms of reach, but above all as guarantors of a high-quality production – always for the benefit of the people being profiled. This year, that is the composer Marcel Vaid. Our aim is to show the film industry and the public that outstanding film music is being created in Switzerland. And we’re succeeding thanks to the artists who are also making a name for themselves internationally.
What is the situation regarding the number of film composers in Switzerland?
I believe that film music creators in Switzerland form an important and numerically large community, one which, above all, has a long tradition. Together with forum filmmusik, we maintain a database (swissfilmmusic.ch) which impressively demonstrates this.
Has there been any major project in recent years that was particularly prestigious for the Fondation Suisa?
I do not wish to single out any one project or individual at this point. Our aim is to ensure continuity, which ultimately forms the basis for an artistically and economically viable foundation for film music creators. This includes not only the one-off blockbuster, but also work on TV series. I also regard the fact that film music has been receiving increasing public attention over the past few years as a success of our work.
Do you also offer film composers the opportunity to network?
Not directly, but we are actively collaborating with organisations such as forum filmmusik, SMECA (Swiss Media Composers Association) and SoundTrack_Zurich. We also collaborate with other film festivals on a project-by-project basis.
How do young composers manage to carve out their own path – to break away from the mainstream whilst still being successful?
Simply agreeing on a universally valid definition of the two terms ‘mainstream’ and ‘successful’ would probably go beyond the scope of this interview. After all, where a person and their work are situated depends on very different factors, each weighted differently by the individual. Personally, I cannot really identify a ‘mainstream’; rather, I perceive our music world as a multitude of niches of varying sizes but equal standing, and I refer to this, in the most positive sense of the word, as ‘cultural diversity’.
Urs Schnell has been Director of the Fondation Suisa since 2008. Prior to that, he was Managing Director of the VBMS (Association of Bernese Music Schools) and the SMS (Swiss Music Syndicate). He studied at the Winterthur Conservatoire (teaching diploma in flute) and at the University of Basel (Arts Management).
