Spring 2014\

Unintentionally, spontaneously, amusingly, most Monkish, writes American Jazzcritik Art Lange about the music of Jürg Wickihalder and Irène Schweizer. After years of cooperation and many duo-concerts Irène Schweizer and Jürg Wickihalder present the first duo-recording with compositions of Wickihalder, Schweizer and two beautiful pieces of Thelonious Monk. Music with a strong jazz feeling. Firm rhythm and decisive statements. The entire history of jazz plays a role: Lacy, Rollins and Coltrane, Monk, Dollar Brand, Horace Silver and Mal Waldron, even a few particles of Harlem Stride Piano but all of it filtered, not as direct quotations; they have made it their own. What we notice is their immense trust in each other. While they hone their craft on Monk, its always in the knowledge that the crucial spark does not light up in the notes but between them.