The Jazz Festival in Schaffhausen, which has been running since 1990, focuses exclusively on Switzerland’s scene. Schaffhausen itself is a photo-friendly historic town about 30 miles north of Zurich, located on the Rhine near the German border. At the Kammgarn Cultural Centre, we have a festival which shows a great cross section of totally contemporary music. In the three days that I was there, I heard nine different bands with the stylistic variety that we are getting used to nowadays on the European scene.
It is noteworthy that this was the last festival for co-founder Urs Röllin, and it felt particularly appropriate that Patrik Landolt, co-founder of Intakt along with Irène Schweizer, made the final speech. Röllin’s impressive successor is Joscha Schraff, also a musician from Schaffhausen. He is taking over a festival with lots of self-confidence and there are grounds for optimism.
A particular programme highlight was a solo piano gig in homage to Irène Schweizer by Sylvie Courvoisier. Schweizer actually came from Schaffhausen. As Courvoisier explained, Schweizer had been a supportive second mother. That emotion carried through into the performance. It felt very personal and “in the moment”, and not necessarily did one feel that it was a “tribute” in the sense of trying to re-create Schweizer’s style. A particularly personal link was the use of some small cymbals that had belonged to Irene and given to Sylvie.
Another significant pianist on the bill was Colin Vallon who led his trio (with Patrick Morel on bass and Julian Sartorius on drums) and whose third album on ECM came out at the end of 2024. An empathy between the three, where space is given to all to make their impact and we are carried along with them.
Photo credit Peter Pfister
Sartorius is a sound sculptor as much as a drummer. So it was wholly appropriate that he was also our ‘guide’ on a sonic tour of the nearby town of Stein am Rhein. He showed, with mesmerising charm, how found objects in the street, ranging from road signs through to benches, could be converted into musical sounds, the former as a sort of glockenspiel, while a slate roof could sound more like a marimba.
Back at the festival itself we were treated to a significant cross-section of musical styles. Knobil was an engaging and adventurous trio led by young bassist-singer Louise Knobil from Lausanne. Her diversity was the result of initial experiments with singing, inspired initially by hearing Esperanza Spalding, proving that Covid lockdown has not necessarily been negative for music. Bass clarinet Chloé Marsigny helped enhance the energy and vivaciousness of the performance. They in fact had played a recent Queer Jazz night at the Vortex.
The only free improvised gig over the evenings was that of guitarist Christy Doran and soprano saxophone of Urs Leimgruber. Doran is a diverse musician whom we heard recently at the Vortex in the band of Florian Arbenz, but here he provided a non-stop sonic and melodic canvas for Leimgruber to splatter us with a whole sonic palette in short bursts. It could be regarded as the sonic equivalent of Jackson Pollock?
There was very little to disappoint over the three days. All groups had particular elements which gave them interest. Such as Wabjie, which benefited from some strong pianism from Michael Wintsch, and the haunting voice of Soraya Berent. She was able to move from declamatory to lyrical in a flash. So Lieb Quartet was a quartet in the more usual vein, of trumpet, piano, cello and drums: relatively refined and elegant, featuring the young female trumpeter Sonja Ott. She was ably joined by the rest of the band, especially Phillip Leibundgut on drums. The second night had ended with Trio Heinz Herbert, a real crowd pleaser, which has been touring extensively around Europe. Full of confidence with the powerful playing of Dominic Landolt on keyboard especially notable.
Unit Records, run nowadays by two musicians, Luca Sisera and Andreas Waelti, oversaw the sales of physical product. It is a label well worth checking out, with the latest releases by groups such as Wabjie and Knobil, as well as a reissued Christy Doran album recorded at the festival in 1995. The catalogue of the Intakt label is another to note, including artists such as Sylvie Courvoisier and Trio Heinz Herbert,as well as many of the best Downtown musicians from New York and our own Alexander Hawkins. It’s fascinating that both keep their standards high, possibly because they retain a strong influence of musicians, either running the label, in the case of Unit, or as directors, as with Intakt.
Also on Unit is the dynamic quartet of saxophonist Marcel Lüscher, which includes his brother Michael on piano. Imaginative melodic counterpoint was provided by Björn Meyer on six-string electric bass, whom I had been more used to hearing in ECM contexts, such as with his own solo album or hearing him with Anouar Brahem at Garana last year. The festival ended though with a big contrast: RLM. Miss C-Line built effective rapping and synth effects over the drums and keyboards and was able to play off the Senegalese rapper Gaston Bandinim.
