and go occasionally to those kinds of places. So, we have that connection with her history in London; I know what Irène is talking about. She came from the same place as she did the same listening. Like I said, she was at Ronnie Scott’s. People position themselves in those early years, late teens to early 20s. If you look at what all of those individuals did, you’ll find that they gravitated to be in the right place. Alex von Schlippenbach and Manfred Schoof lived in Paris, sleeping on the floor, playing for nothing, just opening up sets for well-known bands. And Peter Kowald, what was Kowald doing? He was drifting all over Europe looking for people. He came to London, he tracked down John Stevens. The first time I met Peter Brötzmann was when he came to London. And, everybody had that approach. Or, I’m sure when you look at the history of all those individuals, you’ll find that in that crucial period where they were just forming a sense of what might be possible. What from their own abilities, and what response would they get from the scene or the community? I think Irène came here to learn English, but what she really wanted was to play jazz and listen to jazz and see how the jazz musicians behaved, how did they talk to one another, what kind of opinions did they hold? You learn how to integrate yourself into a community. And Irène’s trip to London has to be seen in that context, and then there’s a period where you don’t know what happens next.”
Secretary: Inner Security
“My mother paid for my education, the boarding school, the language school in London, and the business school in Zürich that I attended in between the boarding school in Lucens—Institut protestant des jeunes filles—and England. After that, I worked as a secretary and I lived off that money. I was able to write shorthand in three languages, and I could type and do transcripts. I did nine-to-five jobs for various American companies. In Zürich I played music, rehearsed with musicians, and also earned a little money from music. But my main income was as a secretary. In Zürich, I had a furnished room very close to the Africana in Sumatra Street, five minutes from Niederdorf, where the Africana was.”
Her younger sister Margrit says that Irène later left her job as a secretary and only played the piano. “Those were difficult years in the beginning, having to get by without a job, without any additional income. That was certainly hard, but she made it. We used to think that Lotte was the talented one. But in London, Irène was the one who got her act together.”
“Compared to London, Zürich is a small town,” says Schweizer. “Zürich is so bourgeois and provincial, and London was my first real big city, it was incredibly fascinating. And I loved the language too. London was actually the most beautiful time of my life—but I didn’t want to move there, and in Zürich I made contact with all the good musicians who lived and played here. Then I started playing a lot in Switzerland, with Pierre Favre and all kinds of people. I’ve always lived better here, part-time jobs were pretty easy to find in Zürich. I couldn’t have done that in England.”
International Amateur Jazz Festival in Zürich: Amateur Was an Attitude
The amateur status of jazz musicians is a Swiss peculiarity. “Amateur” refers to those musicians who play their own music, without making compromises. They earn their living in other ways. By contrast, a musician who is considered “professional” typically has a position in a symphony orchestra. Schweizer describes the Swiss amateur jazz festival as “unique in the world—it existed already in the mid-1950s. All the musicians who took part had some other way to make money, which means that they played jazz but didn’t make a living from it. The musical standard among many of these musicians was insanely high. André Berner was the organizer of these amateur jazz festivals in Zürich. He was an important figure. Hans Kennel, Franco Ambrosetti, Bruno Spoerri, they all played the festival. They were all amateurs back then; they had a career or they were students. There were also people who came from very rich backgrounds, like Alex Bally—his uncle was the shoe company Bally—and Ambrosetti, who had a factory in Ticino. Ambrosetti and Kennel were amateur musicians because they didn’t play jazz as a profession, but they played everywhere. I don’t know how they managed to do all that—work, family, jazz. I was also an amateur musician at the time, but of course I wanted to stay a musician. Franco took over his father’s factory, so did Hans Kennel. Bruno Spoerri was a psychologist, he had a family and he knew that he couldn’t make a living from music. But it wasn’t like that for me; I didn’t want a family, I wanted to become a musician and stay one, and to be able to make a living from it. It took me a long time to get to the point where I could just play music. Then there were also the musicians who played commercial music. Hazy Osterwald played a lot of jazz in the beginning, he was a good trumpet player, but then the band got more and more commercial, a show band. He made really good money, but the music got worse and worse; it was really bad. ‘Amateur’ was an attitude, you preferred to work a job to earn money. You made music out of passion, that’s how it was with us. Most of the people who did that had jobs where they made good money and didn’t have to get too involved in the work. But then they could make the music they wanted to play, without prostituting themselves. That’s how it was with most musicians in Switzerland back then.”
Saxophonist Bruno Spoerri is six years older than Schweizer: “That was a big age difference, of course, I was almost a father figure. When I met her, I was already married, and soon I had children, so I was in a completely different place. In some way, I came from the jazz tradition. I came to Zürich in 1962, after having lived in Basel and Biel. Because I had won first prize at the first Amateur Jazz Festival in 1954, I was practically part of the establishment. That was the relatively traditional Metronome Quintet, which later played light jazz and jazzy pop songs. I quit because I wanted to play more modern stuff.”
From the Jazz Cousins to the First Irène Schweizer Trio (1962–1964): The Beginnings
In 1962 the Schaffhausen newspaper wrote: “The new Irène Schweizer Trio with bassist Urs Rohr and drummer Herbert Velder performed with great success in the preliminary round of the Jazz Festival on August 25, 1962, at the City Casino Winterthur.” The new trio, which mainly played soul jazz, emerged from the hard bop quintet The Jazz Cousins, which included Schweizer, Rohr, and Velder, as well as cornetist Jürg Grau and saxophonist Alex Rohr. Her appearance with the Jazz Cousins “earned Irène Schweizer the winner’s pennant, donated by the company Sinalco.” (SN, September 3, 1962). Under the headline “Irène Schweizer: First Lady of Jazz,” the Schaffhausen paper reported on the second International Amateur Jazz Festival in Zürich, where Schweizer was the only female participant. Selections played by the Jazz Cousins included ‘Miguel’s Party,’ ‘Oleo,’ ‘Close Your Eyes,’ and the Horace Silver compositions ‘Sister Sadie,’ ‘Sayonara Blues,’ and ‘Tokyo Blues.’
The trio opened with the Junior Mance piece ‘Jubilation,’ a well-known ‘hard bop’ theme in which the improvisations were perhaps a little too long. The second piece, an old Negro spiritual, revealed a strong basis in the ‘soul style,’ as the new piano style rooted in the blues is called. The jury noted with great attention the technical progress made by Irène Schweizer, who demonstrated pleasing block chords. The Irène Schweizer Trio’s fourth place award, announced later, can be regarded as a high honor (SN, October 5, 1962).
The recording of ‘Jubilation’ was released the following year on LP.
Since Schweizer did not return from her stay in England until the beginning of September 1963, her trio had to perform outside the competition at the Third International Amateur Jazz Festival, held at Zürich’s Cinema Urban. In November, she worked as a secretary at the Zürich branch of the US financial group Brunswick Inc., on the Limmatquai.
First Concerts with Uli Trepte and Mani Neumeier
In December 1963, Schweizer played a three-day engagement at the Schaffhausen Cinema Scala, in a 50-minute program accompanying the jazz film All Night Long. In addition to saxophonist Alex Rohr, bassist Uli Trepte and drummer Mani Neumeier were part of the group. “Since the general public unfortunately showed little interest in this event, this kind of thing will probably not often be heard again.” (SN, December 21, 1963).
January 4, 1964 saw the launch of a new Swiss television series, Jazz Made in Switzerland, with the aim of introducing young and well-known amateur jazz musicians to a wider public. The first broadcast featured the Irène Schweizer