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Carte Blanche: Victoria Mozalevskaya

Brigitta Grimm03-25-20255 min. read

Victoria Mozalevskaya is one of the nine artists who have received a Carte Blanche from Moods for the 24/25 season. The Carte Blanche is awarded to outstanding musicians on the Swiss jazz scene and gives them the opportunity to develop their current musical work and try out new things. Victoria Mozalevskaya also founded two completely new projects as part of her Carte Blanche and talks about how this came about.

Victoria Mozalevskaya's journey has been an impressive one: she grew up in Kazakhstan, moved to Russia as a teenager to continue her musical education, and later to Switzerland, which she has called home ever since. Victoria Mozalevskaya laughs: "I moved to live with my sister in another city when I was fifteen or sixteen. And when I see my children, I think, 'What, at fifteen? So young?" Mozalevskaya's musical roots lie in classical music, but her fascination with jazz - especially contemporary jazz - led her down a new path. "Switching from the classical language to that of jazz was difficult. The rhythm of classical music is binary, that of jazz is ternary - you have to practice, listen a lot, analyse and try things out".
Siberia – San Francisco – Bern – New York
Her training then took her to Novosibirsk. There she was offered an unexpected opportunity. One of eight students from across Russia, she was selected for an exchange programme that took the students to Washington and San Francisco. "It was very inspiring, a great city - and it spurred me on to go further." It was also in San Francisco that she first heard of the San Francisco Jazz Collective (an all-star ensemble led by Chris Potter), which in turn inspired her to found the Zurich Jazz Collective.Although her dream was to live in America one day, it was time to stay in the States. "It would have been crazy to go from Siberia straight to America, once around the world. So she decided to take a different route. At the age of 21, she transferred to the Bern University of the Arts (HKB). The reason she chose to study in Switzerland was mainly pragmatic, says Victoria Mozalevskaya: she already knew students at the HKB and the timing was right.After completing her bachelor's degree in Bern, Mozalevskaya made the final leap across the pond to New York. "One year in New York is like ten years anywhere else - so many performances, so many opportunities, but also so many challenges," she says enthusiastically. The year Mozalevskaya spent in New York after completing her bachelor's degree was one of the most formative periods of her musical career. "The lifestyle and intensity of the city... I played as much in one year as I would have played anywhere else in five years. Every night there was an opportunity to play somewhere, even if the gigs were often poorly paid. But the experience was amazing.After her return to Switzerland and her subsequent Master's degree, she first had to find some peace and quiet, to sort out and process what she had experienced. With her family in Zurich, she has found her artistic base and now creates music with deep personal references and also refers again and again to what she has experienced and gathered.
FRAME.OUT: Breaking out of fixed frames
The saxophonist's first Carte Blanche concert took place on 23 May last year with her newly founded project FRAME.OUT. "My first project FRAME.OUT is about these 'frames' in which you think and move. These are patterns, attitudes that you learn as a child... from the Soviet Union, from Russia, from Kazakhstan, from my family... but at some point they no longer work. And then you have to reorient yourself". Then you have to get out of old ideas, find new frameworks in which you want to move - "and only then can you be free".She chose the line-up through personal contacts: "It happened very quickly and spontaneously. I already had the concept in my head and I chose the people I really wanted to play with". Victoria Mozalevskaya, for example, admires Song Yi Jeon's voice and reports: "It was also something completely new for me to write lyrics and not just notes." It was at the HKB that she met the now internationally successful duo Lada Obradovic and David Tixier.Visit our streaming page to watch the concert:
6. April 2025: Zürich Jazz Kollektiv
"Since I've been in Zurich, I've noticed that I feel at home here. I appreciate the Zurich jazz scene and how people work together on projects. That's why I wanted to do a project for the scene here". As a big fan of contemporary jazz, from bebop and hard bop to modal jazz, she has repeatedly noticed examples of collectives that act as "research platforms", cultivating and developing this style. "Here in Switzerland, we have a big band tradition, but it's a very specific line-up and it's all about playing compositions. And since my passion is above all improvisation, I wanted to have a larger ensemble in which I could try things out and create a space for improvisation within the framework of contemporary jazz".The compositions in this first edition are mainly penned by Victoria Mozalevskaya. She is inspired by life, as she herself says: "Much of the music I write for the Zurich Jazz Collective is based on my experiences as a musician and as a woman, but also on war - today as in the past - or memories of the Soviet Union. The latter in particular came to her during a visit to Berlin. She wrote the composition "Echoes of Berlin", which she will also present with the Zurich Jazz Collective on 6 April.But the ZJK is not intended to be a flash in the pan. Mozalevskaya sees her compositions as the basis for the ZJK repertoire, but also says: "The idea is to expand the repertoire later. Depending on the composition of the collective, we may play more improvisations than compositions. I would be delighted if we could continue to work on this and develop it further. It should not be just her project: "Of course I'm the one who initiated it and who's leading it in the beginning, but it's not like I own it. If someone wants to develop it, that should be possible. It's not something that's fixed. It's alive.

Victoria Mozalevskayas Carte Blanche-Konzerte

  • Carte Blanche

    Victoria Mozalevskaya

    • Zürich Jazz Kollektiv feat. Alex Sipiagin

      Jazz Modern CreativeJazzContemporary Jazz
    More

  • FRAME.OUT

    Victoria Mozalevskaya

    • Jazz
    • Contemporary Jazz