Susanne Abbuehl and Mirjam Hässig
Photo: Maxim François
Susanne Abbuehl (b. 1970 in Bern, NL/CH) studied jazz singing with Rachel Gould and Jeanne Lee, composition with Diderik Wagenaar, and classical Indian singing with Prabha Atre at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Since 1999 she has been involved in teaching and research at various universities. She is passionate about art and education. Her releases for ECM Records have won prestigious awards, and she was honoured with the 2017 European Jazz Musician Award and the 2016 Swiss Music Prize. In addition to singing, she also teaches ensembles and is particularly interested in the interaction between music and words (setting to music, sound poetry, rap, spoken word). As a mentor, she draws on her many years of wide-ranging experience and focuses on the goals and affinities of her mentees. She loves invention and enjoys accompanying mentees on their very own paths.
Photo: Isabelle Schoenholzer
Mirjam Hässig, born in 1995 and raised in Burgdorf (CH), studied performance and pedagogy in jazz and contemporary music at the Bern University of the Arts, where she works as a singer and songwriter. In 2019, she founded her own quartet Ayé! and in the same year she won the Burgdorf Culture Promotion Prize. In November 2021, Ayé!'s debut album “Coralland” was released by the Basel label HOUT Records. The quartet is currently working with Esther Sévérac (harp), Nadav Erlich (double bass), Nicolas Bianco (drums and electronics) on their second album, which will be released on 4 October 2024 at Sägegasse Burgdorf. Since 2021, she has been a member of the jury of the Cultural Commission of the Burgergemeinde Burgdorf and teaches at the Zollikofen/Bremgarten Music School.
Project
Mirjam Hässig and Susanne Abbuehl had already collaborated during Mirjam's semester at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, focusing on setting texts to music, composition, and lyrics, as well as forming a band and developing it through repertoire selection and collective musical work.
For the Double Jazz Mentoring project, Mirjam’s goal is to further explore music as a medium of connection and to deepen her exploration of her artistic identity. As a composer and vocalist, she feels equally drawn to groove, elastic rhythm, and agogic shaping. She has been influenced by jazz, folk, and electronic pop. Her compositions, with or without her own lyrics, provide space for improvisation and creative development for all participating musicians. Working with a band as a cohesive organism is as essential to her as her compositional work.
As part of the Double Jazz Mentoring project, Susanne and Mirjam will focus on developing a solo program for and by Mirjam, with the creation process documented during an artistic residency.
Mirjam:
"My goal is to present my compositional and musical identity outside the context of a band and to offer insights into my solo work through audiovisual recordings.
This solo project is also an opportunity for me to refine and solidify my own musical language – with the intention of bringing this knowledge and clarity back into future collaborations, bands, and interdisciplinary projects."
Susanne:
"In our collaborative dialogue, we will experiment and explore ways to structure Mirjam’s compositional and performance process toward a new solo project. We both believe that working as a solo artist will also bring fresh impulses to Mirjam’s band projects."
