The Swiss guitarists Dave Gisler is best known over here from the exciting band Pilgrim. Since last year, Gisler and his compatriots Raffaele Bossard (double bass) and Lionel Friedli (drums) have been collaborating with no one less than the top American trumpet player Jaimie Branch. The encounter makes musical sparks fly.
trumpet
Jaimie Branch
guitar
Dave Gisler
double bass
Raffaele Bossard
drums
Lionel Friedli
in partnership with
Hnita Jazz Club, Mechelen Cultural Centre
After studying with Kurt Rosenwinkel, among others, Dave Gisler founded his own trio in 2017: a free-thinking ensemble that alternates raw rock energy with more sensitive and lyrical passages. That is also what you hear on the album Zurich Concert, recorded live at the Unerhört! Festival 2019. Led by Gisler as an unconventional sound architect, the trio contrasts moments of suspended silence with enormous eruptions of collective improvisation. It is a band that makes music in the moment, in search of untrammelled freedom.
That approach suits Jaimie Branch down to the ground. Branch initially made a name for himself on the avant-garde scene but made his breakthrough among a wider audience with the project Fly or Die. They presented the sequel to this project at nona in November 2019: Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise. It was the kind of concert you’d like to frame and hang on the wall.
