Born 1941, piano, drums. Irene Schweizer was particularly interested in music because of the dance bands she heard at her father’s restaurant, and the chance to play with the instruments left behind. She began playing the piano in early jazz styles at the age of 12 and, at 14, started playing the drums. She was able to transition to modern jazz three years later. In 1960, the group she was part of entered an amateur festival in Zurich. She was an au pair in England during 1961/62 and took piano lessons with Eddie Thompson, a blind pianist. This taught her styles from stride to beatbox. She was also playing soul jazz and hard bop at the time, similar to Horace Silver’s music. After her return to Switzerland, she formed an ensemble with drummer Mani Neumeier, and Uli Trepte. The exposure to South African musicians such as Dollar Brand and Louis Moholo and the listening to Free jazz (particularly Ornette Coleman’s Free jazz) gave the music a new flavor. She told Hale (1997) that she was invited to the Frankfurt Jazz Festival in 1966 and began to be known beyond Switzerland. We started to hear the sounds of Berlin’s Total Music Meeting and musicians such as Peter Kowald and Peter Brotzmann. We got bored of the constant changes and rhythms. Something happened one day while we were practicing. We did not know the cause, we just let go of all our systems’. Gustafsson (n.d.), reports that Schweizer was also influenced around the same period by Cecil Taylor, but that she considered quitting the piano after hearing him live in 1966. There was no place else to go. She combined her disappointment with her knowledge about jazz styles and her search for her own creativity to create a music that was unique. She felt pushed to play harder than she might have otherwise because she was the only woman in the room at the time. She formed a trio of Pierre Favre, Peter Kowald, and Evan Parker from 1968 to 1970. After a while, they became a quartet. She began her solo piano performances at the Willisau Jazz Festival 1976. By this time, she had also established her long-standing partnership, which started in 1973 and continues through many guises to the present. Irene Schweizer seems to be particularly drawn to performing with percussionists over the years. There are, according to records, duos with Han Bennink and Pierre Favre, Mani Neumeier and Louis Moholo. In the late 1970s, Schweizer joined the Feminist Improvising Group. Its members included Maggie Nichols, Lindsay Cooper and Sally Potter. FIG became the European Women’s Improvising Group in 1983. We renamed it to be more open and international. EWIG stands for “eternal in German” (Hale 1997). This was the beginning of Les Diaboliques, a group that performed intermittently. It was formed in 1990. Schweizer was also a founder member of the Taktlos Festival, and one of the organizers of the Canaille festivals (see Canaille 91 and Canaille 92). She is also a partner in Intakt Records. from http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk
