Simone Keller (born 23 March 1980) is a Swiss pianist.
Simone Keller, a classical pianist by training but with a transversal and interdisciplinary outlook, was born in Weinfelden, in the canton of Thurgau, in 1980. As an artist and performer, she feels at home in contemporary music, musical theatre, improvisation, and in experimental and participatory formats. A tireless initiator of musical projects, her ensembles are true frameworks for the exploration of contemporary sound: the Kukuruz Quartet (which researches in spectacular fashion the potential of prepared pianos played by eight hands), the TZARA Ensemble (which works between contemporary music and mediation) and the Retro Disco trio (with horn, cello and synthesisers). As a guest performer, Simone Keller has played regularly with ensembles such as the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Southwest German Philharmonic, and the Collegium Novum Zurich. She has collaborated with renowned conductors like Peter Rundel, Jac van Steen, Pablo Heras-Casado, and others. Keller has also recorded various works, including Ustwolskaja's Piano Sonatas for the Böhlau-Verlag Wien and collaborated with institutions like the SWR Experimental Studio.
Additionally, she has a significant presence as a theater musician, participating in numerous productions at theaters like the Theater Basel and Schauspielhaus Zurich. Since 2014, Simone Keller has co-directed the production company ox&öl with the director Philip Bartels. The company conducts participatory projects at the Zurich Tonhalle and develops interdisciplinary music theater productions, including collaborations with individuals with cognitive impairments. ox&öl received recognition from the Department of Culture of the Canton of Zurich in 2017 for its cultural inclusion work and was nominated for the "Junge Ohren Preis" in Frankfurt in the same year.
Simone Keller has been invited to various international institutions, including the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2016, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University in 2017, and in 2019, invitations from Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music in New York, and Brown University in Providence/Boston.
In 2018, Keller's recording of Julius Eastman's piano music, released by Intakt Records with Kukuruz Quartet, received critical acclaim and appeared on several best-of lists, including being recognized as one of the "Best classical albums" by the Boston Globe and "Album of the year 2018" by The New York City Jazz Records. She was also nominated for the international innovation award by Classical:NEXT in 2019. In the same year, she received both the IBK Prize and the IBK Sponsorship Prize from the youth jury. Simone Keller is the recipient of the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Prize in 2021.
In 2022, she was honored with both the Swiss Music Prize and the Thurgauer Culture Prize. [1]
Simone Keller's 2024 publication "Hidden Heartache" (Jungle Books / Intakt Records) highlights the overlooked brilliance of marginalized composers, especially women and minorities, and explores themes of social inequality and unequal power relations through piano music and a collection of diverse essays.
Marilyn Crispell is an American jazz pianist and composer. Scott Yanow described her as "a powerful player... who has her own way of using space... She is near the top of her field." Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote: "Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano... She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." In addition to her own extensive work as a soloist or bandleader, Crispell is also known as a longtime member of saxophonist Anthony Braxton's quartet in the 1980s and '90s.
Irène Schweizer was a Swiss jazz and free improvising pianist.
Barry John Guy is an English composer and double bass player. His range of interests encompasses early music, contemporary composition, jazz and improvisation, and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras in the UK and Europe. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music under Buxton Orr, and later taught there.
Sylvie Courvoisier is a composer, pianist, improviser and bandleader. She was born and raised in Lausanne, Switzerland, and has been a resident of New York City since 1998. She won Germany’s International Jazz Piano Prize in 2022 and was named Pianist of the Year for 2023 in the international critics poll of Spanish jazz publication El Intruso. NPR’s Kevin Whitehead has encapsulated the distinctive character of Courvoisier’s art this way: “Some pianists approach the instrument like it’s a cathedral. Sylvie Courvoisier treats it like a playground.”
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René Wohlhauser is a Swiss composer, pianist, singer, improviser, conductor and music teacher.
Erika Radermacher is a German pianist, soprano and composer.
Bettina Skrzypczak is a Polish/Swiss composer.
Max Eugen Keller is a Swiss composer, jazz pianist and improvising musician. He was one of the first free-jazz musicians in Switzerland. Since 2007 he is chairman of the Swiss Society for New Music.
Oliver Schnyder is a Swiss classical pianist.
Julia Gomelskaya was a Ukrainian composer of contemporary classical music.
Ohad Talmor is an American/Swiss jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, conductor and arranger.
Klaudia Pasternak is a Polish contemporary composer and opera conductor, who has twice been nominated for the prestigious Paszport Polityki.
Salut Salon is a chamber music quartet from Hamburg, Germany, with two violinists, a cellist, and a pianist, all women. It was founded in 2002 by violinists Angelika Bachmann and Iris Siegfried. They have been called "the Harlem Globetrotters of piano quartets."
Yang Jing is a Chinese born, Swiss composer and world-famous concert pipa soloist.
Hildegard Kleeb is a Swiss pianist.
Rahel Ava Indermaur is a Swiss opera singer and dramatic soprano. She was the first recipient of the Cantonal Prize for Culture of the Canton of St. Gallen. Indermaur, trained classically in Germany, has performed throughout Europe and in Asia. Her career includes performances with the Berliner Philharmonie, Tonhalle St. Gallen, Tonhalle Zürich, the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Hôtel du Nord is a studio album by American violinist Mark Feldman and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier together with drummer Gerry Hemingway and bassist Thomas Morgan. The album was released on the Intakt Records label in 2011. This is the follow-up album for their 2010 To Fly to Steal recorded by the same line-up.
The Big Picture is a 2009 avant-garde jazz studio album by English guitarist and composer Fred Frith and the Swiss-based ARTE Quartett. It was recorded in January 2008 at Swiss Radio DRS2 in Zürich, Switzerland, and was released in 2009 by Intakt Records, together with Frith and the ARTE Quartett's first collaborative album, Still Urban, which was also recorded in January 2008 at Swiss Radio DRS2.
Luzia von Wyl is a Swiss jazz pianist, composer, and music educator. She first studied classical piano before switching to jazz piano and music composition, earning degrees from University of the Arts Bern, Zurich University of the Arts, the Lucerne School of Music, and the University of Zurich. Von Wyl is the composer, pianist, and director of the Luzia von Wyl Ensemble, a jazz band signed with Hat Hut Records.