RIP Irène Schweizer

Jazz Pianist, Activist, Icon

Schaffhausen, 2 juni 1941 – Zürich, 16 juli 2024

1989 © Sylvia Luckner

Irène Schweizer is the great personality of European jazz. The pianist has shaped the international jazz scene as well as the Swiss music landscape with her countless live concerts and her recorded work on over 75 CD’s. In 2018, she was awarded the Swiss Grand Prix Music, endowed with 100,000 Swiss francs.

Her musical path leads from the swing and bebop of her beginnings to liberation in the free avant-garde and to forms of contemporary jazz – from London's Ronnie Scott's jazz club and Zurich's Africana Club to the avant-garde stages in Wuppertal, Berlin, Willisau, Chicago, New York and Zurich.

Her concerts with the female musician trio Les Diaboliques, and her recordings with legends of jazz like Don Cherry, Louis Moholo, George Lewis, Hamid Drake, Fred Anderson, Han Bennink, Pierre Favre wrote music history. In Switzerland she toured with the saxophonists Co Streiff, Omri Ziegele and Jürg Wickihalder (a.o. at Jazz!Brugge 2012).

© Francesca Pfeffer

With her solo performances in the Swiss temples of high culture, the Culture and Congress Center Lucerne (KKL) and the Tonhalle Zurich, she showed herself to be a leading pianist of today's jazz. Irène Schweizer's music has been released, published, maintained and distributed worldwide by the Zurich-based label Intakt Records since 1984.

Irène Schweizer fought for artistic freedom and autonomy. She consistently stood up against apartheid and for women's rights. Active in the feminist and lesbian scene, she is a pioneer of the gender movement – with the Feminist Improvising Group FIG, the European Women's Improvising Group EWIG, the Swiss-French-English trio Les Diaboliques and Canaille, the first women's jazz festival in Switzerland.

Schweizer’s biography, written by Berlin journalist Christian Broecking and authorized by Irène Schweizer, “This Uncontainable Feeling of Freedom. Irène Schweizer – European Jazz and the Politics of Improvisation” describes the musical career as well as the life and commitment of the artist. Irène Schweizer is a co-founder of the two Zurich festivals Taktlos and unerhört! and of the Zurich label Intakt Records.

© Francesca Pfeffer

In 2021, after her 80th birthday, Irène Schweizer retired from concert life for health reasons. The association "Friends of Irène Schweizer" and Intakt Records are together taking responsibility for the artistic legacy of the pianist as well as for the distribution of her work.

© Intakt Records

Biography:
“This Uncontainable Feeling of Freedom. Irène Schweizer – European Jazz and the Politics of Improvisation”
Translated by Jeb Bishop
2021 Published by Broecking Verlag, Hochschule Luzern, Verein Freundinnen and Freunde von Irène Schweizer
Print on demand and E-Book