America has made generations of Europeans dream. The Swiss in particular. Even if we can hardly imagine it today: Until the 19th century, people died of hunger in our country. Emigration was essential for survival. In 1819, the town of Nova Friburgo was founded in Brazil by 265 Swiss families in a region with a climate similar to the one they had left. In the United States, there are no fewer than 16 towns or villages called "Lucerne" and, of course, there are also a few "Geneva".

With the turn of the 20th century, the "Eldorado" lost its luster; the USA, the "American Dream", became the epitome of the fascinating West. This was also true for musicians, such as Dvořák, who was director of the conservatory in New York from 1892 to 1896, where he developed his Symphony from the New World a piece so emblematic that Neil Armstrong later deposited it on the moon. In the musical West Side Story Puerto Rican immigrants dreamed the American dream, and in pop music, Joe Dassin L'Amériquethe moms & dads sank into California Dreamin' and Patrick Juvet raved: I love America.

All this seems far away today; America no longer makes us dream. Globalization and the Internet have melted away the technological and social advantage on the other side of the Atlantic. In view of today's economic and political circumstances, hardly anyone looks enviously to the West anymore.

This makes the theme of this number even more complex. It is the countless interactions with the West that occupy us: be it in jazz, be it in the impressions of a young Swiss-German composer who marvels at Parisian musical life, be it in the back and forth of Brazilian music over the centuries. Four American composers who have yet to be discovered in this country round off the focus.

So let's set off to (re)discover the West!