Canton of Zurich honors Irène Schweizer

The 2018 Culture Prize of the Canton of Zurich, endowed with 50,000 francs, goes to jazz pioneer and pianist Irène Schweizer. With this award, the cantonal government honors an artistic life's work that has "significantly shaped Swiss jazz and established itself internationally".

Irène Schweizer's career as a musician could be straight out of a rags-to-riches novel, writes the Canton of Zurich. Her artistic career began with the hand organ, which she learned to play as a child. She then went on to play the drums and piano, initially self-taught, and later took lessons with a private teacher. At the age of fourteen, she was a member of a Dixieland band, later attended a business school and earned her first money as a secretary. From 1958, she turned to modern jazz and performed every year until 1961 with the Modern Jazz Preachers at the amateur festival in Zurich, winning in 1960. Encounters with Abdullah Ibrahim and Chris McGregor at the legendary Jazzcafé Africana in Zurich and with Cecil Taylor in 1966 led her to free jazz. From 1976, when she celebrated a legendary success at the Willisau Jazz Festival, she also gave solo concerts. What followed were collaborations with musicians from the international jazz scene, each concert a reference to the avant-garde.

In addition to her musical activities, she was an early feminist advocate for women's equality. At the end of the 1970s, she was a member of the Feminist Improvising Group and later founded the trio Les Diaboliques with Joëlle Léandre and Maggie Nicols. However, she has not only helped shape Zurich's cultural life as a musician, but also as a co-initiator of the Taktlos Festival and the Intakt Records label. By awarding the Culture Prize to Irène Schweizer, the cantonal government is paying tribute to "an exceptional musician and cultural activist".