Jazz Trombone Festival
Jazz Trombone Festival @ JazzBaragge
JazzBaragge Wednesday Jam
JazzJam
The history of the Jazz Trombone Festival
The Swiss jazz trombone scene has developed into a lively and diverse community in recent years. With the Jazz Trombone Festival 2025, curators Nils Wogram and Florian Weiss want to offer this scene a platform and bring the diversity and creativity of Swiss jazz trombonists closer to a broad audience.
Why is that? One answer can probably be found in the top-class education at Swiss music academies. You can study jazz trombone in Switzerland in Zurich, Lucerne, Bern, Basel and Lausanne, where you have the opportunity to be taught by internationally renowned musicians. A great deal of emphasis is placed on creativity and originality in the training, and the lessons do not only consist of learning the instrumental craft. Swiss cultural funding has also contributed a great deal to this development. It enables creative minds to pursue their individual musical path, develop and record their music and bring it to the stage with their bands. This support has also made itself felt in the small «jazz trombone» plant, so that we now have a very colourful landscape of active trombonists in the country, all of whom pursue their own style (I'm sure I could recognise them all in a so-called «blindfold test»).
For years, I have been carrying around the desire to make this diversity visible. Together with my co-curator, the trombonist Florian Weiss, I am delighted to be able to realise this wish in the form of the Jazz Trombone Festival 2025 and to present a part of the jazz trombone community with their bands on the stages of the Zurich jazz club Moods and the GZ Riesbach!
A platform for the diverse jazz trombone scene
It was no easy task to put together a festival programme from our long list of busy jazz trombonists. In the end, we decided on six bands that represent the jazz trombone and the Swiss scene as well and as variedly as possible. In one case, however, we moved away from the national perspective in our planning so that we could include the unique Australian jazz trombonist Shannon Barnett, who lives in Cologne, with her quartet. She will be joining Zurich trombonist Michael Flury, who will be performing with his band featuring pianist Simone Keller and sound designer Jonas Häni, for the opening evening. On Saturday evening, we look forward to the extremely active jazz trombonist Samuel Blaser and his trio, followed by the explosive and boundary-breaking duo of trombonist Josephine Nagorsnik and drummer Jim Black called «CHINZILLA vs EmC Splinter». The third evening at GZ Riesbach in cooperation with Jazz im Seefeld will feature two bands that were significantly influenced by the initiators of the festival: With the internationally renowned trombone quartet ‘Vertigo Trombone Quartet’ with Andreas Tschopp, Bernhard Bamert, Jan Schreiner and Nils Wogram, four trombonists will be on stage first, followed by trombonist Florian Weiss' long-standing working band called «Woodism».
The complementary programme
Thanks to generous sponsors, we were able to put on an extensive supporting programme in addition to the actual festival programme. On Sunday, for example, a jazz trombone choir with over 20 amateur trombonists will perform a commissioned composition by Bernhard Bamert, while on Saturday we can look forward to a lecture on the history of the jazz trombone by SRF editor Luca Koch in the run-up to the concerts, a photo exhibition about the jazz trombone in a live context by photographer Palma Fiacco will accompany the concerts at Moods and the winning band of the competition for young jazz trombonists, the Hammond trio «Mundus» led by trombonist Victor Decamp, will open the JazzBaragge jam session on the Wednesday before the festival.
With this festival, we hope to make a small contribution to the spread of the trombone in jazz, to spark love for this versatile and also somewhat bizarre instrument and to celebrate the great scene of active jazz trombonists in Switzerland.
Nils Wogram
Programme overview
Jazz Trombone Festival
Lieder ohne Worte neu in 3D
Keller/Flury + Häni
Jazz
Jazz Trombone Festival
Shannon Barnett Quartet
Jazz
Jazz Trombone Festival
CHINZILLA vs. EmC Splinter
JazzElectronic Jazz
Jazz Trombone Festival
Vortrag / Listening Session
«The History of the Jazz Trombone» mit Luca Koch
Jazz
Jazz Trombone Festival
Samuel Blaser Trio
JazzExperimental Jazz
Jazz Trombone Festival
im GZ Riesbach
Vertigo Trombone Quartet
Jazz
Jazz Trombone Festival
Dirigiert von Bernhard Bamert
Jazzposaunenchor mit Lai*innen
Jazz
Jazz Trombone Festival
im GZ Riesbach
Florian Weiss' Woodism
JazzExperimental JazzModern Creative Jazz
