Results for "Switzerland"

Silvan Joray

Born: March 23, 1996

Silvan Joray is a Swiss jazz guitarist and composer currently based in New York City. He has gained recognition in the jazz community, having won special prizes at the UNISA International Strings Competition in South Africa 2022 and the Smietana Jazz Guitar Competition 2019 in Poland. He has performed at prestigious jazz festivals including the Krakow Summer Jazz Festival, Offbeat Jazzfestival Basel, and International Jazz Festival Bern, and has toured in Germany, Norway, Poland, Spain, and Israel.

Joray grew up in a musical family and began his formal training on the classical guitar, which he studied for eight years before discovering jazz and switching to the electric guitar. He was initially interested in playing jazz standards and influenced by guitarists such as Wes Montgomery. However, his studies with renowned jazz guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel at Jazzcampus Basel broadened his musical horizons, inspiring him to compose his own music. This eventually led to the release of his debut album "Cluster" in 2020, which was produced by Muthspiel and co-produced by Swiss Radio SRF2.

Shems Bendali

Shems was born in 1996 and grew up in the small city of Thonon-Les-Bains (France). He studied first with French trumpet player Jeff Baud and then went to study at Lausanne Jazz music faculty (Switzerland). There he studied with Matthieu Michel, Emil Spanyi, Robert Bonisolo, René Mosele and Banz Oester. Within the first year of studying there, he quickly made his way through the Jazz and Hip Hop scene and was playing in every major jazz venue in the country. With his band and his many prolific artistic collaborations, Shems has been playing regularly in many countries such as Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany, England, Ukraine, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Turkey, and Egypt for the past few years. He has performed on stage and/or recorded in studios with Bastian Baker, Kadebostany, Charlie Winston, Fianso, Rilès, Danitsa, Lea Lu, Issam Krimi, François Jeanneau, Matthieu Michel, Pierre Drevet, Banz Oester, Emil Spanyi, Jean-Lou Treboux, Chistophe Moniot, Nils Wogram, Nik Bartch, Emmanuel Bex and many more.

Marc Crofts

Born: December 27, 1989

Curious and passionate, Marc Crofts has immersed himself in a wide variety of different traditions, playing with musicians around the world, from Istanbul to Seville, developing a rich and personal musical sensibility in the process. After completing jazz studies at the Lausanne conservatoire – strengthening his musical and narrative skills – Marc has continuously striven to expand his musical outlook, always adding a personal twist to tradition. Founder of the band Gilgul (Balkan music), for who he wrote many originals, he also composes and performs regularly with a number of ensembles: Yolanda Almodovar Flamenco Band (Swiss, Spanish and Danish tours in 2018-19), Swing High, Gypson 5ive, Hotegezugt, etc. In 2020 Marc is teaming up with violinist Yardani Torres Maiani for an exciting new flamenco violin duet... ​ Since 2018 he's been focusing mainly on his own trio project, with guitarist Railo Helmstetter and bassist Blaise Hommage

Take Five with Mareille Merck

by AAJ Staff
October 23, 2021

Meet Mareille Merck Mareille Merck is a guitarist and composer who was born in Germany and lives in Zurich, Switzerland. She studied with Frank Möbus, Lionel Loueke, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Roberto Bossard and Kalle Kalima. At the young age of 25 she has already shared the stage with John McLaughlin and Michael League from Snarky Puppy. Mareille ...

Bill Evans: Switzerland, 1975

September 15, 2021

Before I share with you a beautiful recording by Bill Evans, my apologies for the broken links in yesterday's email blast of my Phil Schaap post. The service I use—Feedblitz—screwed up. According to a member of their trouble-shooting team, the link was incorrectly classified by the service's anti-abuse systems. What set off alarms was the use ...

Paykuna

Earthy, knitted and deep. Paykuna's approach is the symbiosis of Bolivian folk music and modern jazz aesthetics. This band is the creation of swiss-bolivian pianist Demian Coca, who’s compositions are multi-layered soundscapes, full of rhythmic variety and vivid melodies. Paykuna's music emphasizes its folcloristic background but the cool, thoughtful Swiss side of the composer is certainly not hidden. Demian Coca grants his players space for the unplanned and performs a clever balancing act, between control and intuition. Paykuna takes the listener on to a journey – somewhere between the rainforests of Amazonia and the deep lakes of Switzerland.

Luciana Morelli

Born: March 29, 1990

Luciana Morelli (1990) is an Argentinian singer, performer and composer based in Basel, Switzerland. Her music draws on a rich palette of influences from Argentinian music, jazz, sound poetry and free improvisation.

She leads her own project as a singer and composer and recently released her second album as a bandleader “Lo abismal, el agua” (ears&eyes records, 2021), in which she tells the story of her journey to Switzerland, not only with lyrics, but also with her wordless vocals and arrangements, building a bridge between her Argentinian musical roots and jazz.
The album received very good reviews in magazines and blogs such as Jazz N More, SKJazz, among others, and was chosen "Album of the Week" by NQ Jazz (UK) and by the radio program "Jazz am Sunntig" (Radio RaBe, CH). It was also part of the October selection of Club del Disco (Argentina) and has been broadcasted on Radio Swiss Jazz and on international radio programs such as Jazzkultura (Poland), WDR (Germany), NDR (Hamburg, Germany) and Radio Nacional (Argentina), among others.
In 2022-23 Luciana and her band went on tour and played at various venues in Argentina,
Switzerland, France (Festival Jazz á la Citè, Paris) and Germany, receiving a very good reception from the public and the press.
"Words of the wind" is the name of her new album, in which poems by Anne Carson, Robin Myers, Emily Brontë and Alejandra Pizarnik find their musical expression in the singer's voice and in her compositions and arrangements for different instrumentations and ensembles.

Björn Meyer

Born: September 5, 1965

For more than thirty years, Björn — Swedish-born and Swiss-based — has shaped a unique voice for his instrument inside the most diverse contexts. He has worked alongside Persian harpist and singer Asita Hamidi and is a long term collaborator with Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem. He has spent more than twenty years with Swedish nyckelharpa player Johan Hedin and percussionist Fredrik Gille in Bazar Blå, co-defining the sound of contemporary Swedish folk music. For more than a decade he was a member of the minimalistic, zen-funk, groove-collective Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin. His first solo-album “Provenance” was released by ECM in the fall of 2017

Montreux Jazz Artists Autumn of Music

by Martin McFie
October 26, 2020

The Montreux Palace Autumn of Music Montreux Switzerland 12-17 October 2020 The obvious, burning question for Montreux Jazz Festival press officer Marc Zendrini, concerned plans for the Festival in 2021. He replied “We have safe possibilities for outside performance next summer, all along the lakefront. But for which artists, on what ...

Luca Lo Bianco

Born: June 13, 1974

Luca Lo Bianco was born in Palermo on June, 13th 1974. He started playing electric bass when he was thirteen and after a few years he approached the double bass. He graduated with the maximum grade in double bass in 1999 under the guide of Mo. Franco Muzzi. In 2010 he obtained the Master degree in Jazz Music with Magna Cum Laude at the State Music Conservatory 'Vincenzo Bellini' of Palermo with a thesis entitled 'Musical syncretism in contemporary Jazz’. From 2010 until 2015 he taught electric bass at the 'V. Bellini' State Conservatory’s Jazz Department of Palermo and from 2011 until 2013 at the 'A