The selection process wasn’t easy, strictly speaking: Following the tender process last September, more than 120 personalities from the Swiss music scene – composers, lyricists and publishers – were available to choose from to succeed the retiring 15 members of the SUISA Distribution and Works Committee (VWK). Candidacies from all musical genres and parts of Switzerland as well as Liechtenstein were submitted.
Selection by the SUISA committee and Board
From December 2014 onwards, the SUISA VWK nomination committee, consisting of SUISA Board members and management representatives as well as one representative from the membership department dedicated themselves to review the dossiers that had been submitted. During the selection process, care was taken to consider that the future set-up of the VWK should allow for the maximum possible types of genre and that all language regions of Switzerland and Liechtenstein would be represented. Furthermore, the committee should consist of composers, lyricists and publishers. Finally, it is important to ensure a good cross-section in terms of age and gender.
After several meetings and personal discussions with some of the candidates, the nomination committee created a list with potential candidates for succession. Said list was presented to the SUISA Board which has finally agreed to 15 people in its session on 09 April 2015.
The 15 candidates for the by-election
The Board is going to propose the following candidates for election at the SUISA General Assembly on 19 June 2015:
Nik Bärtsch – pianist, composer and music producer (Zurich/ZH)
Walter Boss – wind music composer and conductor (Vaduz/FL)
Bruno Brodt – Landler and wind musician (Zizers/GR)
Pascal Brunko – sound engineer, composer, producer and publisher (Valangin/NE)
Ursina Giger – singer songwriter (Zurich/ZH)
Stephan Kohler – DJ and producer of electronic music (Lausanne/VD)
Grégoire Liechti – Publisher (Geneva/GE)
Ann Kathrin Lüthi – composer and singer (Zurich/ZH)
Xavier Samuel Michel – author, composer and publisher (Geneva/GE)
Guido Röösli – author and publisher (Lucerne/LU)
Marco Santilli – clarinettist, composer and singer (Niederhasli/ZH)
Jörg Schneider – composer (Lengnau/BE)
Philipp Schweidler – music producer, composer and publisher (Zurich/ZH)
Mathias Spohr – serious music composer and musicologist (Zurich/ZH)
Thomas Zbornik – composer and publisher (Arth/SZ)
You can access detailed profiles of the candidates in the invitation sent to you by letter for the SUISA General Assembly, or here (pdf, 0.25 MB, in German).
SUISA members can choose to stand for election for the Distribution and Works Committee during the General Assembly in June.
| This is how the VWK members are elected Once the election of the new VWK members is due, SUISA will publish it via its publication channels, write to associations and directly contact the candidates. Any dossiers that are submitted will be reviewed by the VWK nomination committee. The committee consists of:
The committee proposes a selection of suitable candidates to the SUISA Board. The Board subsequently decides which candidates will be proposed for election during the General Assembly. |
| Tasks of the distribution and works committee The VWK is mainly concerned with distribution-related issues which are regulated in the distribution rules. The committee
The VWK is elected by the members at the General Assembly. In line with the Articles of Association, item 9.4, it may also be entrusted with additional tasks. Each committee member has one vote, absent members cannot be represented by other committee members. Based on the SUISA Articles of Association, the VWK must have no more than 22 members. It counts both authors and publishers among its members and is newly elected every four years. The period of office is four years. Members can only be re-elected three times. The current VWK members can be looked up here. |