“As a woman, as a musician, she’s accomplished so much. She grew up in Schaffhausen, had a job, and came to free jazz fairly late, but then changed that world in such a concentrated way, as well as the Women’s Movement, when she came out. For her it’s a matter of course; she’s so convincing about it. For her it’s completely normal, nothing special, and she also doesn’t think that now she has to play everywhere. That might also be a bit of a Schaffhausen mentality. One wants to get away from the narrow anxiety of that town, while also being proud of your home. The very direct manner that people prize in Zürich, we don’t like that so much. There’s this reserved character that I know from Schaffhausen. People are self-assured, they do what they want to, but they don’t really want to make a big deal about it, it’s more ‘yeah, I’m here.’ In what I do, sometimes I have the feeling that I’d be happy if it were more accepted, or liked, or tolerated, but on the other hand you have the feeling that yes, this is totally normal. That person’s going to work, I’m going to the concert. People from Schaffhausen aren’t interested in hype.”
“It’s certainly that way for Irène too: ‘Playing in the concert hall is great, but I don’t want or need to make a big deal about it.’ That’s a typical Schaffhausen attitude: I do my thing, and I’ve been doing it for a long time, and now other people are taking notice, but I’m not interested in that. It’s a very nice way to be, and I’m very familiar with it in Irène’s case. It’s the strength to say ‘I’m sitting down here, and the king or anyone might be there, but I’m going to play my thing, and if they don’t like it they can go home, I’m going to do it.’ That focus is unique. She sits down, starts playing, stops, done. Leaves the stage and talks to me about her sisters. It’s quite funny.”
Swiss drummer Lucas Niggli (born 1968) is familiar with Schaffhausen: his grandparents lived there, and it’s his mother’s hometown. “Irène was born the same year as my mother, and her birthday is one day after my mother’s. My mother can also be hardheaded, but I don’t think that’s a typical Schaffhausen characteristic. I think it was a big influence on Irène that her parents were innkeepers, and also maybe being close to Germany, that already gives you a kind of flexibility, more than in the interior of Switzerland. If you live at the border, maybe you’re more willing to cross boundaries.”
The Modern Jazz Preachers, 1958–1961: the Legacy of Art Blakey
In August 1958, the Modern Jazz Preachers from Schaffhausen, featuring 17-year-old Irène Schweizer at the piano, took part for the first time in the Winterthur qualifying round for the 8th National Amateur Jazz Festival in Zürich.
“The inclination towards modern sounds is a general phenomenon in jazz that has increased more and more in the last few years. The Schaffhausen combo with the ambitious name ‘The Modern Jazz Preachers’ plays in the classic cool style and shows notable musical ability. The members are (ladies first!): Irène Schweizer (piano), Mano Fenaroli (bass), Herbie Velder (drums), Werner Bührer (alto saxophone), and Rolf Oechslin (tenor saxophone). In Irène Schweizer, a very promising pianist, we have the rare case in which the female element makes an active appearance in an amateur jazz festival.” (SN, August 27, 1958.)
As it turned out, the Modern Jazz Preachers were selected to take part in the 1958 National Amateur Jazz Festival in Zürich.
“After spending the whole evening playing almost nothing but old and well-known jazz standards, Miles Davis’s piece ‘Four’ was like a breath of fresh air for the dutifully attentive listeners. With that piece, the Schaffhausen jazz combo, playing brilliantly, earned the greatest enthusiasm from the near-capacity audience at the Volkshaus, and made their participation in the NAJF a foregone conclusion. These young amateur musicians then proved that the success of ‘Four’ was no accident by following up with the significantly more harmonically difficult number ‘Walkin,’ in which Irène Schweizer attracted the greatest attention with her distinctive piano playing, full of ideas.” (SN, September 3, 1958.)
In 1959, the Modern Jazz Preachers took seventh place in the category “Orchestra in the Modern Style” at the 9th National Amateur Jazz Festival (NAJF). Irène Schweizer came in fourth in the soloist category for “Swing and Modern Style” on piano; the year before she had been awarded a special prize for best woman participant.
The group performed not only at the functions organized by the Schaffhausen Association of Modern Jazz Listeners (Schaffhauser Interessengemeinschaft für modernen Jazz, IGFMJ), but also sometimes at corporate functions. In March 1960, the Georg Fischer company presented an evening of music featuring the band, attended by almost 450 employees of the company, mostly young people.
A Modern Jazz Preachers concert in Singen, Germany, near the Swiss border, presented as “Jazz from Switzerland,” attracted 300 listeners. The Schaffhauser Nachrichten reported:
The trio numbers, played in the style of Errol Garner with soloist Irène Schweizer at the piano, and blues vocals by bandleader and tenor saxophonist Rolf Oechslin, were particularly well-received. This second concert by the Preachers in the Uhland concert hall in Singen was only the second time since the opening of the hall that as many as 600 people attended. Although during their first visit they played both traditionally and in the modern jazz style, this time there were no concessions to the audience, apart from the pieces presented by the Irène Schweizer Trio in the style of Erroll Garner: ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ and ‘Cheek to Cheek.’ The Preachers remained absolutely true to their modern jazz ideal, and for two hours they ‘preached’ cool and passionate hard bop, received with appreciation by the audience, which included critically sophisticated listeners. (SN, June 26, 1960.)
Gustav Sigg (1928–2017), a professional lathe operator, supported Schweizer’s early career as a musician in his free time. He wrote about her in the Schaffhausen newspaper, organized performances in Singen, and was the director of the IGFMJ. He remembers: “Irène had the good fortune to grow up in an inn. Already as a young girl, she was always around, and watched how the drummer and the pianist played. At the sound checks, she watched, and sometimes played a bit. Little by little she grew into it, she got more and more interested in music. Earlier on, even classic jazz pieces were played as dance numbers, with a swing feeling. So she got that feeling very early on. When the musicians set up their instruments in the hall, she would sit down at the drum kit. As the president of the jazz club, I was there on many such occasions, and I organized a lot of Dixieland concerts in the area near the border. Even while Irène was still in school, she found some students her own age to work with, and put together a Dixieland group. That was the classic instrumentation: piano, bass, drums. But they still didn’t have anyone to play piano. So in the mid-1950s, she appeared with a jazz band, the first and only woman in Switzerland to do so. At that time it was practically unthinkable to see a woman playing with a band of men. It was clear that she had a natural feeling for the music, and her technique was also very good. When the Dixieland group had run its course, she got curious about more modern pianists, and suddenly it was like a lightbulb went on for her, and that was it for the boogie-woogie and blues.”
“Because of World War II, for eight years we were cut off from America, the country jazz came from. The first bebop records didn’t arrive in Switzerland until after 1949, and they made people crazy. Some people were totally enthusiastic, and others, especially older people, thought those records had nothing to do with jazz. In the jazz clubs there were wild discussions. There were a lot of meetings where old and new jazz records were played, and the traditionalists always said they didn’t want to hear bebop. So then there were schisms, and new clubs were opened. I went with the modernists. At the concerts we organized, we had the problem that the audience was for the most part not ready to listen to this new music for two hours. The young men came to the concerts because of Irène, but she wasn’t interested in them. Anything having to do with