The Great Harry Hillman

The Great Harry Hillman is a band from the vibrant, experimental music scene in Switzerland – a quartet that has reached a telepathic level as an improvisational unit. Characterised by a sensitivity for each other’s playing and the ability to channel the truth of the moment, their concerts oscillate between the lyrical, the surreal and the brute. This hypnotic trip is created in real time, in fleeting scenes of free improvisation on composed themes. Trippy jazz with a good dose of punk, played by a band that is always in search of its musical identity and transforms contemporary influences into something both beautiful and beautifully disturbing. The Great Harry Hillman has been playing together for 16 years and has recorded five albums.

Nils Fischer – bass clarinet
David Koch – guitar
Samuel Huwyler – bass
Dominik Mahnig – drums

Blaer

BLAER’s music is quiet and powerful. No sound is too much here, everything has its place. Repetitive piano patterns, spherically floating saxophone lines and driving beats characterise this minimal jazz reduced to the essentials. In the ten years of its existence, the band around pianist and composer Maja Nydegger has not done things by halves and has made a name for itself in the Swiss jazz scene.

Maja Nydegger – Piano, Komposition
Nils Fischer – Bassclarinet
Claudio von Arx – Tenor Saxophone
Simon Iten – Double Bass, fx
Philippe Ducommun – Drums

Zurich Jazz Orchestra

The Zurich Jazz Orchestra brings together 18 musicians who have long since ‘made themselves heard’ in Switzerland for regular, intensive rehearsals. Concerts at the highest level, different programmes ranging from mainstream to today’s orchestral big band sound and rousing improvisations by the soloists can only be guaranteed in this way. Precise and yet relaxed, with pressure and yet dynamic, the band swings with an almost unswiss explosiveness. Jazz as only a large orchestra can produce it.

Reto Anneler, Lukas Heuss, Toni Bechtold, Tobias Pfister, Nils Fischer – Reeds | Adrian Weber, Bernhard Bamert, Maurus Twerenbold, Jonas Inglin – Trombones | Nicola Bernhard, Wolfgang Häuptli, Bernhard Schoch, Raphael Kalt, Daniel Schenker – Trumpets | Sophia Nidecker – Tuba, Anja Huber – French Horn | Theo Kapilidis – Guitar, Gregor Müller – Piano, Patrick Sommer – Bass, Peter Primus Frosch – Drums (Sub) | Ed Partyka – Musikalische Leitung, Daniel Schenker – musikalische Co-Leitung, Bettina Uhlmann Baumer – Managing Director

Strahl.Loher.Fischer

Raphael Loher, Nils Fischer and Silke Strahl improvise sound surfaces and sound stories. At the centre is the joint exploration of boundaries. An experiment with assertion, tension, dissolution? – Repetition, time and space.

Raphael Loher – piano, preparations
Nils Fischer – bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet
Silke Strahl – tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone

Solo Bassclarinet

Nils Fischer is researching his effect set-up for bass clarinet. A solo set is in the making.

Nils Fischer – bass clarinet, effects

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