This Uncontainable Feeling of Freedom

Irène Schweizer: jazz pianist, activist, icon. A self-taught musician from the Swiss village of Schaffhausen, at the age of 19 she won first prize at the Zurich amateur jazz festival. (The festival had not anticipated that a woman might win: first prize was a men's shirt.) The creative journey of this young woman from the north of Switzerland led her inexorably to experimental music: from the London jazz club Ronnie Scott's and the Zurich club Africana to avant-garde stages in Wuppertal, Berlin, Willisau, Chicago, and New York; from concerts with Don Cherry, Louis Moholo and George Lewis to solo appearances as a celebrated artist in the Swiss temples of high cu…