Laurence Desarzens e Giulia Dabalà

Laurence Desarzens has been active in the Swiss music scene for more than 40 years as a programmer at the Rote Fabrik, at Moods (Zurich), and later at Kaserne Basel (Basel). She has been a manager for groups such as The Young Gods and worked in Brussels for the PIAS label. She collaborates equally with public and private institutions on assignments and projects combining music, art, fashion and design. She also has extensive expertise in new technologies dating back to 1996, an experience that she has made a point of incorporating into her work, often acting as a pioneer in this field. From 2016 to 2020, she was appointed director of the Flon site of the Haute école de musique de Lausanne (HEMU), which hosts the departments of jazz and contemporary music. Since 2020, she has been President of the Jury of the Swiss Music Prize, President of Swiss Music Export and President of the committee of the Festival Les Créatives in Geneva.

Giulia Dabalà: Born in Switzerland in 1998, Giulia Dabalà spent her entire childhood in Burma, where she discovered her passion for music and singing. Upon her return to Switzerland in 2011, she became involved in various artistic activities such as singing, piano, theatre, dance and beatboxing. In 2015, at the age of 17, she began composing her first album, Voices, a project centred on the voice, an exploration of its richness and its many uses. The voice is the only instrument used to create these tracks. On stage, she uses a loop station to combine organic rhythms with jazz-inspired harmonies and lyrical melodies, creating a whole with a pop aesthetic. In 2017, she began teaching singing at the Ton sur Ton Music School. Alongside her own project, she collaborates with beatboxer Arthur Henry and joined the international project of Kenyan singer Muthoni Drummer Queen, with whom she has had the opportunity to perform on the biggest stages in Europe. In September 2018, she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Jazz Singing from the Basel Academy of Music, and began a Master’s degree in Performance in September 2019. In May 2020, her track War Drums won the Demotape Clinic, a competition organised by the M4music festival in Zurich. This victory opened many doors for her for what came next…