Marc Ribot Solo

Enigmatic guitarist Marc Ribot has released 6 very diverse solo guitar albums, including John Zorn’s Book of Heads, Plays the Works of Frantz Casseus, Saints, Don’t Blame Me, Exercises in Futility and 2010&#x27;s. Silent Movies on Pi Recordings has been described as a &quot;down-in-mouth-near master piece&quot; by the Village Voice and has landed on several Best of 2010 lists including the LA Times and critical praise across the board. His live solo performances are unpredictable events which may draw on all of these or none, creating a sonic matrix of memory, free improvisation, zeitgeist, extra-terrestrial radio signals - always leaving the listener on the edge of their seats.

Guitar

Vocals

JazzBaragge Wednesday Jam

Tuesday Jam @ JazzBaragge

The JazzBaragge Wednesday Jam offers an important platform for the Swiss jazz jam scene. After the musical opening of the jam band, lively and exciting sound conversations begin between musicians who spontaneously meet on stage, reflecting the diversity of jazz in all its facets. The JazzBaragge Wednesday Jam is supported by the non-profit association JazzBaragge. There is no presale for JazzBaragge, only box office.

Bass

Drum Kit

Espuma Antigua

Espuma Antigua — the “ancient foam” — rises from the depths of the sea, bringing old music back to the shores of the present, carried by wind and salt to the ears of today. The quartet, led by Geneva-based musician Flora Ageron, aims to create a dialogue between past and present — blending them into an electronic yet gentle cocktail. Their first album, Spleen Baroque, released in October 2021, was dedicated to forgotten women composers of the 17th century. Their new album, Continuo, is a tribute to the Earth and to traditional culture — to repetitive, enchanting melodies that unfold like endless stories told on summer nights under a starlit sky. Espuma Antigua delves into the Baroque repertoire, uncovering hidden treasures and bringing them to life in unexpected places. The group has performed at the Cully Jazz Festival, La Cité, Lavaux Classic, Jazz au Peuple, and at the Alhambra in Geneva as part of the Festival de la Bâtie.

Sara El Hachimi Quintet

Sara El Hachimi’s music combines elements of jazz and singer-songwriter traditions and is characterized by a spirit of experimentation. Inspired by artists such as Samora Pinderhughes, Saya Gray, Esperanza Spalding, and Wayne Shorter, her work centers on expression, honesty, and reflection. The pieces process emotions and experiences through music and lyrics. With floating melodies, pulsating rhythms, and an understated groundedness, the quintet creates a warm, intimate sound that touches the listener and leaves room for discovery. The ensemble — consisting of vocals, alto and tenor saxophone, piano, synthesizer, bass, and drums — offers an authentic, poetic soundscape that seeks to heal and connect. Sara El Hachimi recognizes in music the power of communication — one that supports both ourselves and one another. Her compositions are philosophical, inviting, and never didactic, which lends them their particular authenticity. The quintet invites listeners to be present in the moment — human, aware, and close. Her music is an expression of genuineness and emotional depth that moves the audience and inspires reflection.

Cello

Chip Wickham

Chip Wickham is a crossover artist between club culture and jazz, influenced by early collaborations with The Pharcyde, Nightmares on Wax and Matthew Halsall. His music thrives on emotional clarity, playful openness and stylistic diversity - carried by flute, saxophone and a top-class ensemble from the British jazz scene. At Moods, Wickham presents his new album The Eternal Now (2025, Gondwana Records), a homage to the creative moment beyond time - a journey into new sonic spaces with borrowings from Lonnie Liston Smith or David Axelrod. Co-produced by Matthew Halsall, it is Wickham&#x27;s most experimental work to date - an album that impresses with its playfulness, emotional depth and musical breadth.

Saxophon

Flute

Trumpet

Piano

Fender-Rhodes E-Piano

Les Reines Prochaines

Skinny Bird

Pre Opening Act

Skinny Bird performs the very finest eco-punk. With their homemade aesthetics made from cardboard boxes, the performance disguised as a concert is truly a recycled, holistic spectacle! Their songs and stories are taken directly from life and invite you to sing along and join in. Their songs rarely last longer than 30 seconds. Debora Gerber and Sarah Büchel stage them skillfully in punk style: if something goes wrong, it&#x27;s part of the program! It looks amateurish, but it is - but with great professionalism.

Les Reines Prochaines 

Opening Act

The Reines&#x27; concert program includes songs from their current album Scissor*hood, performative numbers and typographic projections from their in-house video kitchen. They tailor the world for themselves! Scissors stand for skill and zest for action, for independent, self-determined work and life. Scissors are needed for this, because they are the tools for making things yourself. Scissor*hood means sisterhood with scissors and scissor*hood means doing things together and knowing how.

BIG ZIS & BIG HUG EXPERIENCE

BIG ZIS & BIG HUG EXPERIENCE (duplicate)

Album Release «Big Hug»

With Big Hug, the Swiss rap icon BIG ZIS is releasing a collaborative music project. Building on the previous album «B:I:G - Bitte in Gross» (2024), a new, independent but collaborative work was created in close collaboration with over 23 artists from different generations and scenes. Retrospective and visionary, the album combines rap, pop, punk, doom metal and even noise, breaking down any genre boundaries and thus making visible a polyphonic, resistant network of formative Tinfas* of the Swiss music scene. The DIY of BIG ZIS is contrasted with the Do-it-Together (DIT) of the Future. New forms of a resistant but pluralistic language for Swiss music will be tested. With orchestras and icons such as Radon, Les Reines Prochaines, Eto*, Fatima Moumouni, Ester Poly, Jessica Jurassica (and many more), the Moods stage will be stormed. It&#x27;s Takeover Time, It&#x27;s BIG HUG Time! Zurich rapper Big Zis has been shaking up the male-dominated Swiss rap game since the late 90s with her clever lyrics, funny punchlines and provocative attitude. She has recorded several albums, made an award-winning music video, performed on pretty much every Swiss stage from antifademo to high culture institutions and won the 2020 Swiss Music Prize and the 2021 Zurich Art Prize. Musically, she combines hip-hop with jazz, punk and improvisation in an eloquent yet danceable rebellion against long-outdated social norms and the patriarchal order, delivering an urgent, clever, humorous and provocative work that is unique in the Swiss music landscape.

BIG ZIS & BIG HUG EXPERIENCE

DJ Grrrl in the Garage

Warm Up & Afterparty

Growing up in industrial Sheffield in the north of England, with Indian and Styrian parents. That&#x27;s where the mix began. She spent the 90s in Liverpool and Berlin, in basements, backyards and on rooftops. Crossfade. And ended up in the Alps in the noughties. That&#x27;s how you have to imagine it musically. Or subcultural; and queer. “Phew, it&#x27;s all mixed up, but I think you&#x27;ll like it!”

DJ Scarlett

Afterparty

Since 2010, Scarlett has been bringing voices to life that are rarely heard in the party business for power-structural reasons - predominantly the voices of women, queers and trans people who play beyond the hegemonic soundtrack. Although she is at home in a wide variety of sonorous milieus, she is primarily guided by the versatile forms of expression of rap. Rap becomes less a genre than a resonating entanglement that connects voices and creates empowering alliances. Scarlett sees herself as a mediating curator of DJ sets, who prefers to perform in places where music is not only perceived, but also experienced as political and poetic material. Her work oscillates between archive, stage and experimental arrangement - in which marginalized perspectives not only become audible, but claim space.

The Last Show: Lilly Martin's Farewell to the Stage

Passionate blues and soul are Lilly Martin&#x27;s trademark. A native New Yorker from a family of Cuban artists, she has lived in Switzerland for years, shaping the local blues scene all the while. She has played at all the country&#x27;s renowned blues and jazz festivals, released several successful solo albums, and won a Swiss Blues Award in 2020. But now it&#x27;s time to call it a day: Martin is saying goodbye to the stage. She has chosen Moods for her final performance, which is a great honour for us. Together with her band, she will perform her urban blues and soul, characterised by the musical diversity of her origins, one last time. This is a live finale not to be missed.

Keyboards

Zurich Jazz Orchestra playing Rob McConnell

Rob McConnell (1935–2010) was a Canadian trombonist, composer, and arranger. He is best known for founding and leading the Grammy Award-winning big band The Boss Brass from 1967 to 1999. Rob McConnell&#x27;s big band music is firmly rooted in the jazz tradition, but offers clever interpretations of well-known jazz standards, challenging ensemble passages (for the musicians) and exciting ones (for the audience), as well as plenty of space for the orchestra&#x27;s soloists. Other hallmarks of Rob McConnell&#x27;s music are the expanded instrumentation (eleven brass instruments, including two French horns) and the subtle humor that runs through all his compositions. Ed Partyka met Rob in 1989, and the two remained in contact until Rob McConnell&#x27;s death. Partyka recalls: “He was an incredibly warm and funny person, which you can also hear in his compositions. In my opinion, he was also an underrated soloist on the valve trombone, surpassed in expression and virtuosity only by Bob Brookmeyer.”

Leitung

Altsaxophon

Tenorsaxophon

Baritone Saxophone

Trombone

Bassposaune

Horn (Cornet)

Mark Guiliana plays MARK

Ever since the first day he picked up a pair of drumsticks, Mark Guiliana has been instinctively exploring and absorbing the music and rhythms that have been ever-present in his life. Fast forward to the present day and he has earned a formidable reputation as a world-class drummer, composer and thinker at the forefront of contemporary jazz and beyond. Guiliana’s artistry defies convention, weaving together a musical output beyond jazz with the ultimate goal of creating compelling musical narratives. Guiliana’s new album “MARK”, represents an introspective voyage into his creative depths. On the record, Mark performs solo on a wide array of devices; you can hear his quintessential grooves intermixed with intriguing percussive soundscapes, sublime tapestries of synthesisers and fragments of spoken word. “MARK” is an album that peels back the layers of Guiliana’s experiences, reflections, and the wisdom gleaned from a life immersed in music. It transcends genres and defies categorisation, floating in the boundless space of pure expression. Through music and through life, Mark looks into the mirror and asks eternal questions of identity and growth: who am I, where am I going and what do I stand for?

Percussion

Dumama

Kay Zhang – ANCESTRAL ROOTS

ANCESTRAL ROOTS invites people to a celebration that honors heritage and culture, living in and through the diaspora, and third culture identities through sound, storytelling or chanting, making the invitation wide, vibrant and inclusive. South African musician, sonic poet, and cultural researcher Gugulethu Duma (aka Dumama) criticizes and deconstructs archaic modes of representation of South African sonic and performance culture. As a storyteller and lyricist she weaves together childhood songs, stories and personal memories with electronic hues and gestures, experimenting with the divide between traditional oral culture and futuristic, globally oriented poetics in her embodiment of an African technological consciousness. For her performances and recordings, she predominantly works with voice, uHadi (a traditional Xhosa bow instrument), live vocal effected loops, processors, field recordings and distortions. This event was co-curated by Tracy September. Tracy September is a musician, performer, and music researcher born in South Africa and based in Zürich. Drawing from jazz, traditional Xhosa singing, and electronic experimentation, her work explores memory, spirit, and protest through improvisation. Tracy weaves voice, electronics, texts, archives, and field recordings into storytelling rooted in ritual and community. She also composes for film, theatre, and dance, performs with the band Black Pitch, and DJs under the alias youngseptember.

Voodoo Trio

Michael Bucher, Patrick Sommer, Lionel Friedli

With his latest coup, guitarist Michael Bucher stirs up big emotions and dangerous grooves. The Voodoo Trio is behind it all. With this new lineup, Bucher moves hypnotically between rhythmic conciseness and grandiose clouds of sound; between urgency and looseness; and between speed and emphasis. The focus is on the simultaneity of accessibility and depth, as well as spontaneity and awareness of form. Alongside Bucher are the two Voodoo magicians, Patrick Sommer (bass) and Lionel Friedli (drums), who also work their magic. Together, they impress with their exuberant joy of playing, rousing groove euphoria, and interactive energy. They don&#x27;t get bogged down in their improvisations but instead arrive at sensible ideas without unnecessary banter. Bucher has composed a varied repertoire for this group, characterized by an absence of nerdy over-complexity. The Voodoo Trio sparks enthusiasm wherever jazz lives and thrives. In other words, they engage in a wide-awake and independent dialogue with tradition. The Voodoo Trio has something to say and does so in a language anyone who loves jazz can understand.

«Fatal Footsteps» & «Sur un air de Charleston» vertont von Constanza Pellicci & Steve Buchanan

IOIC, Filmpodium & Moods present

The prime example of a contagious dance from the Roaring Twenties that played a significant role in the emergence of youth culture is the Charleston. The Charleston dance craze was a phenomenon that sent young people into boundless euphoria and older generations into fear and terror. We are showing two short films and a feature film that deal with the Charleston craze in a humorous way. In ‘Fatal Footsteps’, comedian Charley Bowers plays, as he almost always does, a young man with a monomania, this time his determination to win a dance competition. He practises obsessively, drawing elaborate dance diagrams on the floor, but his style looks less like Charleston and more like a St Vitus&#x27; dance. Sur un air de Charleston by French director Jean Renoir is a surreal, erotic satire in which the world is turned upside down and a local white girl in run-down Paris teaches a futuristic African ethnologist how to dance the Charleston. The two short films are set to music by Argentine singer and dancer Constanza Pellicci and American singer and multi-instrumentalist Steve Buchanan, using an instrument developed by Buchanan that allows music and dance to interact, combining rhythms live while tap dancing to the samples in real time. The body is used as a sequencer, interacting and adapting the beat to the sample tracks. The result is an extraordinary experience between movement and sound that effortlessly transcends the boundaries between music and dance itself.

«Skinner’s Dress Suit» vertont von Camila Nebbia, John Edwards, Hamid Drake

In the newly restored feature film Skinner&#x27;s Dress Suit, the protagonist Skinner has a lowly job that doesn&#x27;t quite match the image his adoring wife has of him. This exuberant comedy about domestic customs from a bygone era, when husbands went to work and wives went shopping, is nevertheless a delight, thanks in particular to the stars Reginald Denny and Laura La Plante and the motif of infectious dancing that runs throughout the film. In the film&#x27;s highlight, the two cause a sensation at an elegant soirée with the latest dance craze, the Savannah Shuffle... For the first time, three international greats of jazz and free improvisation come together in a trio for the feature film: Argentine saxophonist Camila Nebbia, described by Jazz.pt magazine as ‘one of the most important saxophonists of our time’; British double bassist John Edwards, one of the most sought-after bassists around; and American drummer and percussionist Hamid Drake, who incorporates Afro-Cuban, Indian and African percussion instruments and influences into his drumming and has worked with numerous jazz greats such as trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and bassist William Parker. If you&#x27;re not afraid of these infectious dances, we recommend attending the afternoon dance workshop led by Alessandra Hitz and then hitting the dance floor after the silent film programme to show off the moves you&#x27;ve learned to the music of DJ Robin. The event is being held in collaboration with the Zurich Silent Film Festival, which is organised by Filmpodium and the IOIC – Institute of Incoherent Cinematography.

DJ Robin

A DJ set that moves between jazz, swing, house, disco, soul and funk. Get ready to dance, sweat and party on the dance floor.

Elec. Tap Dance

Since 2017, we have been streaming some of the concerts and enabling the musicians to earn additional income - 70% of the subscription revenue goes directly to the musicians. With a subscription you get access to over 600 concerts and help to keep this project running.

Streaming

Over 700 video-on-demand and 40 live streams per year from jazz, global, blues, funk, soul and rap await you. Curated with playlists and recommendations from our program team. In addition, 70% of the subscription revenue goes directly to the musicians. With a subscription you support the artists and this project.