“Jazz Becomes Feminine” was the title of an article about the Swiss Amateur Jazz Festival in Zürich, which appeared in the September 8, 1960 issue of the journal Sie+Er.
In those years, the NAJF was the high point of a country-wide cellar jazz movement that attracted predominantly young listeners. On September 13, 1960, at the 10th Amateur Jazz Festival, which for the first time also included groups from outside Switzerland, Irène Schweizer was again awarded the special prize for best woman participant. In the category “group pianist,” she was awarded first prize, together with Paul Thommen (from Geneva), and in the category “group playing in the modern style” the Modern Jazz Preachers took second place. As a “gift from Zürich businesses,” the prizewinner “Miss Schweizer” was awarded a pack of cigarettes, a pack of chewing gum, and a men’s shirt.
On March 25, 1961, the Modern Jazz Preachers gave what was provisionally their final concert, in the hall of the Restaurant Falken. In a farewell tribute, the Schaffhausen newspaper celebrated the effect the band had had on the young listening audience:
The spontaneous, communal experience of a jazz concert or dance evening is very exciting for many young people, and often inspires them to seek out records in order to further explore the secrets of this rhythmically and melodically fascinating music. In this regard, the Preachers have done much good, and, in dozens of concerts, have achieved notable success. They have been particularly well received at their concerts in Germany—Singen, Konstanz, Waldshut, Tiengen—and the opinion of a German jazz expert, that the Modern Jazz Preachers are the best amateur Jazz group in the upper Rhine region, from Basel to the Bodensee, is certainly no exaggeration. In any case, no one can deny that the Preachers and their love of making music have brought joy to countless listeners, young and old. The band’s breakup, due to various professional changes in the musicians’ lives, is now a sad reality. Rolf Oechslin is taking on a position as a schoolteacher in the countryside, Mano Fenaroli is working in Zürich, Herbert Velder has completed his basic military training, Irène Schweizer is moving to England, and Wilfried Blättler is studying in Geneva. (SN, April 14, 1961).
England, 1961: First Girlfriend
In 1961 Schweizer traveled to Bournemouth, England, to improve her language skills. “I met my first girlfriend in 1961 at a language school, and had a six-year relationship with her. Her name was Monique Braun and she came from Biel. She spoke French and Swiss German. Her mother was French Swiss and her father was German Swiss. Since I didn’t like speaking French so much, we spoke English from the beginning. And one day she showed up with a copy of Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis, and I almost died. I had never known a woman who listened to or liked anything like this before, and she told me she had jazz records and that she listened to Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan, and I told her I played the piano and I loved jazz.”
“She was the first woman I met who knew something about jazz and had records. All the students lived with families, in rented rooms. Where I lived there was a piano. Monique lived with another family, and on the weekends we met and fell in love. It was very innocent and platonic between us. We didn’t want to go back to Switzerland after the language school, we wanted to go to London, so the school found au pair jobs for us. She fell in love with a bass player who lived in Bournemouth, but we remained friends. I visited her many times in Biel after we were done with school, and she also came to Zürich. She did an apprenticeship there as a nurse at the psychiatric clinic, and that was during the time when I was playing nights at the Africana. Monique got married later and had two children. Now she lives in Geneva. The separation was difficult, but we’ve stayed in touch with each other. I see her once a year; I go to Geneva, or we meet in Bern.”
Authentically Lesbian: Inner Freedom
According to Schweizer, her first girlfriend was “anyway not authentically lesbian, as I am. I already knew at school, at the age of twelve or thirteen, that I wasn’t sexually attracted to men. But it’s also true that my best friends were often men, some of the musicians were also my best friends. Feminism didn’t exist yet, and I didn’t know what it was, I just always thought, yes, there must be other women who are like me. But I was so involved in the music that I put all that to one side, I didn’t want to face it directly. The fact that I never brought a boy home with me was not an issue, no one ever brought it up or asked me about it. My mother just knew that I was friends with Monique.”
London, Ronnie Scott’s: A New Dimension
Looking back, Schweizer has always called her time in London the best time of her life. “Monique worked for a Jewish family and I worked for a very wealthy family in Chelsea Park Gardens, a very expensive neighborhood. It was a family with three children, a nanny, and a cook. And all I had to do was clean a little, dust things, bring them breakfast and do the laundry. In the morning I worked and in the afternoon I could practice at the neighbor’s place. They had a grand piano. The woman I worked for knew that I played piano, and she arranged for me to be able to practice at the neighbor’s. In London I could occasionally practice piano in a music school in the afternoons, they rented the room by the hour for rehearsals, and my employer also arranged that for me.”
Schweizer also took jazz piano lessons in London: “When I was an au pair in London, Eddie Thompson was my teacher. The bass player, who liked to flirt with Monique, sometimes played in a trio with Eddie, a blind pianist who also taught lessons. So I got his address and phone number, and I took the tube to his place every two weeks. It was almost 45 minutes away. He was a classic modern jazz pianist who knew all the standards, and I learned to play all the important standards with him, like ‘But Not For Me’ and ‘The Man I Love’—everything you had to be able to play back then. He was very nice, a good pianist, and he was well-known in London. That was actually the only time when I really had jazz lessons, with Eddie Thompson, and very briefly also with Terry Shannon, who performed regularly at Ronnie Scott’s. Apart from that I taught myself everything by listening to records and rehearsing with other musicians. Learning by doing.”
On her days off Schweizer met Monique, “we went to the cinema in the evening and we experienced ‘Beatlemania,’ that was just starting then. But that didn’t interest either of us at all. We went to Ronnie Scott’s in the evening, to the old Ronnie Scott’s on Gerrard Street, where I got to know all the English musicians. I was there all the time, almost every night; it was practically my living room. I saw Tubby Hayes, Phil Seamen, Joe Harriott, all the English musicians, a different band every night. I was making five pounds a week. That was sixty francs back then. I don’t remember how much it cost to get in, but I was there almost every night.”
She washed glasses behind the bar sometimes, too. When the club found out that she played piano, a bassist took care of her, Schweizer says. “He let me play in another, smaller club on Swallow Street, where piano trios played. When a musician was taking a break, I was allowed to step in and play one or two songs, sometimes on drums. They paid a lot of attention to me and encouraged me. In London, I moved around very freely. I was never afraid, even if I had to walk home late at night from Ronnie Scott’s in the West End. And nothing ever happened to me. Besides the music scene, I was also interested in English and French cinema. It was the time of Free Cinema and the Nouvelle Vague. I went to the movies all the time; I saw Godard’s films, and also the first films of Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta. I was fascinated by these films, because they were so different from ‘ordinary’ cinema. A new world of emotions opened up for me.” (In: Nigg, pp. 56–66).
In Evan Parker’s view, Irène Schweizer studied “the jazz life” in London and finally decided to become a musician: “Irène knew all