Having grown up with Glen Miller's and Satchmo's music, the first key event that initiated my lifelong love for jazz was a concert of Count Basie with Ella Fitzgerald in Zurich . Only in my mid-twenties, I was sent by a small private jazz association to make an interview with Count Basie. His lovely wife, Catherine, sat knitting next to him and Norman Granz, who was slightly amused by my nervous shyness, stood near-by. When I couldn't utter a single word, Count Basie softly tapped on my knees and said warmly: “Don't worry, just start!”
The second key event was a concert of my much beloved hero Earl Hines in Lucerne : during the concert break we exchanged autographs for Davidoff's…
The third key happening was my first jazz journey that led me to Geneva, where the marvelous, meanwhile nearly forgotten Milt Buckner was playing the organ and the piano simultaneously, joined by ‘good old' Jimmy Woode on bass and George Bernasconi on drums.
Proof that I have been given a good ear for young jazz talents has been provided by the fourth important event: at the end of the seventies, I discovered a young jazz trio in a Zurich hotel bar that completely overwhelmed me so that right after the gig I invited them to my home for a record session. They were Monty Alexander, John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton, who up until then had not been very well known in Europe ! In those years, Sir Charles Thomson, Abdullah Ibrahim and Mal Waldron, all of whom fixed my love of jazz for good, played in the same bar as well.
Ever since, I have been collecting both records and autographs, attending concerts, and as a consequence I am enjoying a few, but very long-term friendships with great Swiss and American musicians and their consorts.
