Some sentences hold an entire biography. At one point in Gitta Gsell’s 2005 documentation “Irène Schweizer”, the protagonist says such a sentence: “If jazz didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be a musician!” The 75 minute film is a representative montage of interview, travel impressions, concert excerpts and archive material about an emancipatory break into freedom and jumping in at the deep end. It is for the most part Irène Schweizer’s own doings that the “Jazz” which enraptured her as an 18-year-old from Schaffhausen is not the same “Jazz” through which the pianist became the “Grande Dame of European Jazz”. But besides that: political and musical awakening. 1968. Anti-Apartheid movement. Male-dominated jazz. Bread and butter job: secretary. Free music production. Homosexual women’s group. Feminist Improvising Group. Les Diaboliques. Rote Fabrik Zurich. Globuskrawalle. Women’s right to vote. Taktlos Festival. Intakt Records. No wonder Irène Schweizer sometimes dreams of holding concerts through the telephone. In retrospect, some things sound funnier than they probably were. “Brutal times require brutal music,” Jost Gebers (FMP) once explained. There’s another such sentence. “Irène Schweizer” is 11 years old. Better times sounds good. 2016.
