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Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a Brooklyn-based native of Switzerland and winner of the Swiss Grand Prix and The American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award in 2025, has earned renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the avant-jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades.
Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music. But Courvoisier — “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times — is as compelling when performing Stravinsky’s epochal Rite of Spring in league with new-music pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own acclaimed jazz trio, or in solo. 
In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid. 
Her new quartet Amalthea will tour Europe in spring 2026, supporting the group’s debut album on Pyroclastic Records. A vital part of her output remains the long-standing trio with Gress and Wollesen, praised by DownBeat as “one of the most exciting piano trios at work today.” Their fourth album, Éclats – Live in Europe, will be released in March 2026 on Intakt.
Courvoisier also records and performs in celebrated duos with Mary Halvorson — their 2025 album Bone Bells was voted #1 Album of the Year in Jazzwise — and with Wadada Leo Smith, with whom she released Angel Falls in 2025.
She currently teaches at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City and has taught masterclasses across Europe for more than twenty years.

Christoph Irniger, born in 1979, is a Swiss saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. Over the past years, he has established himself in various ensembles spanning jazz, rock, and related musical genres. He leads the bands Pilgrim as well as a trio, and his work is documented on numerous recordings. Concerts and tours have taken him across Europe, Asia, and the USA. 
From 2000 to 2006, Irniger studied music education at the Jazz School Zurich and performance at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. He has collaborated with artists such as Ohad Talmor, Loren Stillman, Ben van Gelder, Ziv Ravitz, Nasheet Waits, Dan Weiss, Stefan Rusconi, Marc Perrenoud, and Don Philippe (Freundeskreis). Irniger was a member of the Lucerne Jazz Orchestra for over seven years and co-leader of the prog-rock band "Cowboys from Hell." Since 2022, he has composed two programs for the Swiss Jazz Orchestra. www.christophirniger.com

Sarah Buechi (born 1981, Lucerne). "She creates the music of the future," wrote jazz critic Manfred Papst in an extensive portrait in the NZZ about the singer, who was awarded the prestigious Moods-Aïda-Alliman Prize in 2025 and possesses "a distinctive voice with high recognition value." With her "sensitive art of intimacy that is both so open and so sparingly focused," "writers often turn to superlatives."
She has studied various types of music in America, Ireland, Ghana, and India, developing songwriting, world music, and jazz in a highly personal way. SRF called her current trio "the surprise of the year 2022," and with her latest album Pink Mountain Sagas, "the band confirms its excellence."
Since autumn 2018, she has been a vocal professor at HSLU, performing on renowned stages such as the Berlin Jazzfest and the Intakt Festival London. She has also collaborated with established, larger ensembles such as the Jena Philharmonic and the HR Big Band.