Ghost-Note

Ghost-Note are groovy, tight and hot, hot, hot! And in May, they will make their long-awaited Moods debut with their latest album &quot;Mustard n&#x27;Onions&quot;. Ghost-Note is not just any band; it&#x27;s a true melting pot of talent. Led by the Grammy Award-winning percussion duo Robert &quot;Sput&quot; Searight and Nate Werth from Snarky Puppy, the group features an impressive lineup of musicians. They are joined by an extensive list of next-generation musicians, including former bandmates of Prince, Snoop Dogg, Erykah Badu, Herbie Hancock, Kendrick Lamar, Marcus Miller, Toto, and Justin Timberlake. Together, they are propelling funk music into the future. They build on the foundations laid by James Brown and Sly &amp; the Family Stone, enriching their fresh approach with influences from Afrobeat, hip-hop, psychedelia, and world folklore. This concept has been evident since their inception. Their two studio albums, Swagism (2018) and Fortified (2015), received critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide – and anyone who has seen them live will confirm that this band is a must-see.

Cavaliere Spruzzi (Monorecords)

Warm Up & Hangout

The man for funk in Zurich for 4 decades. Who doesn&#x27;t remember the legendary Cool Mondays? Smoky afternoons in THE record store in Zurich on Froschaugasse? Or the Real Funk for Real People series at Moods? Cavaliere Spruzzi is back! You better put on your dancing shoes!

Vocals

Saxophon

Flute

Trombone

Guitar

Keyboards

Bass

Percussion

Drum Kit

Elina Duni & Rob Luft

Album Release «Reaching for the Moon»

The charismatic Albanian-Swiss singer Elina Duni and the London-based guitarist Rob Luft first met at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2017, which marked the beginning of their unique collaboration. Since then, they have toured the world and released two critically acclaimed albums as a quartet on ECM Records. Their upcoming album, Reaching for the Moon, due for release in 2026, sees them return to the essence of their first encounter with a stripped-down duo production. Together, they navigate a universe of jazz, chanson, and Balkan traditions, weaving a tapestry of songs that evoke the mystery and joy of night-time, the moon, and the magic within us all. Duni&#x27;s voice combines with Luft&#x27;s crystal-clear tones to create a mesmerising duet. This evening promises to be a musical journey offering hope in the darkness and reminding us of the comfort of home.

JazzBaragge Wednesday Jam

SPECIAL: SOFIA (Support Of Female Improvising Artists)

The JazzBaragge Wednesday Jam offers an important platform for the Swiss jazz jam scene. After the musical opening of the jam band, lively and exciting sound conversations begin between musicians who spontaneously meet on stage, reflecting the diversity of jazz in all its facets. The JazzBaragge Wednesday Jam is supported by the non-profit association JazzBaragge. There is no presale for JazzBaragge, only box office.

Altsaxophon

Accordion

Korhan Futacı

Korhan Futacı is one of the leading figures in Turkey&#x27;s alternative music scene. When he puts his lips to the mouthpiece of his saxophone, a transcendent ritual begins. His concerts transport audiences from the chaos of the big city to a realm of unknown vitality and darkness. It is a place where traditional Turkish music and free improvisation converge. The boundary between the historical avant-garde and the Mediterranean avant-garde becomes blurred. A look at his collaborations also reveals that Korhan Futacı is a true great. Through his versatile artistic expression, he has collaborated with renowned musicians from diverse genres, including avant-garde icons such as Peter Brötzmann, Marshall Allen, Thurston Moore, Ken Vandermark, and William Parker.

Baritone Saxophone

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

Kay Zhang – ANCESTRAL ROOTS

ANCESTRAL ROOTS invites people to a celebration that honors heritage and culture, living in and through the diaspora, and third culture identities through sound, storytelling or chanting, making the invitation wide, vibrant and inclusive. A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of In Search of Sugar Cane (Dia Arts Foundation, 2025), Village (Coffee House Press 2023) and TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs’s interdisciplinary work has been featured in exhibits at several New York museums, including the Whitney and the Museum of Modern Art, as well as the Venice Biennale in 2015. She will present a 40-minute reading/performance of selected poems from her books TwERK, Village, and other recent works. Drawing from her multilingual, polyphonic practice, she responds to the themes of Third Culture Kids (TCKs) and Ancestral Roots through a dynamic weaving of sound, language, and poetic gesture. Her performance reflects on heritage as both presence and echo, exploring the tension and joy of identities shaped across distance, memory, and mis/translation. With voice, looping, and text, she conjures a space where ancestral legacy and diasporic imagination meet in experimental sound and poetry. This event was co-curated by Stanford Chen: Stanford Chen (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist and poet with a background in cancer biology. Born near Washington, DC to Taiwanese immigrants and now based in Zürich, his practice explores queer identities, migrant stories, and the Asian diaspora. Working through participatory installations, storytelling, and communal rituals, Stanford investigates ways to reconnect with ancestral memory and foster healing, care, and collective belonging.

Tschopp X Lang

What&#x27;s better than one barisax? Two! The duo Tschopp X Lang brings two baritone saxophones to the stage – a rare combination that opens up entirely new sound worlds. Matthias Tschopp and Charlotte Lang demonstrate how two identical instruments can merge into a captivating whole. With this unique formation, the duo explores a previously unheard space in jazz: dense, resonant, and surprisingly multifaceted. Moods and the renowned Swiss jazz label UNIT Records join forces with &quot;UNIT live!&quot; to share the diversity of UNIT jazz. We will be showcasing the diversity of UNIT jazz by bringing the latest releases from the UNIT universe to the Moods stage at regular intervals.

Christoph Irniger - Marc Perrenoud

Album Release «New Lines»

The collaboration between Christoph Irniger and Marc Perrenoud is a unique combination of creative energy and musical skill. Both have their roots in jazz and are technically accomplished instrumentalists with a sparkling temperament. As a duo, they unite the creative energies of two musicians and composers who are renowned on the international jazz scene in a unique way. With their joint program “New Lines”, Perrenoud and Irniger present their first recording for Unit Records in spring 2026. The music is a fascinating mix of original compositions and innovative reinterpretations of classic jazz standards, with the musicians giving their compositions the freedom to emancipate themselves from their models. Changes and melodies dance around each other, challenging, motivating, and inspiring each other, and developing a symbiotic life of their own, just as Irniger and Perrenoud&#x27;s intuitions intertwine naturally. The two musicians have known and appreciated each other for a long time and decided to perform as a duo for the first time in 2022. “This is the first time for both of us to go public in a more traditional context,” Irniger sums up, &quot;and now we just felt like doing it.” And it is precisely this desire that is perceptible in every song, every line, every note, and every interaction.

Charlotte Dos Santos

Charlotte Dos Santos is a Norwegian-Brazilian artist, composer, and producer whose work moves through a soulful blend of jazz, soul, and R&amp;B. Her debut album Cleo (2017) earned international acclaim from Pitchfork, Bandcamp, and The Fader, positioning her early as a singular voice with a cinematic, deeply personal sound. Her follow-up album Morfo (Because Music, UK/FR) expanded her global impact, highlighted by The Guardian, Clash Magazine, Bandcamp, and The Vinyl Factory as one of the standout releases of the year, and earning her the Spellemann Award for RnB/Soul. Dos Santos has been championed across major cultural platforms including Wonderland, Vogue Hong Kong, Hypebeast, Sunday Times Culture, and The Cut. A versatile collaborator, she has worked with artists such as Blood Orange (Dev Hynes), Jordan Rakei, and Irish rapper Kojaque, reflecting her fluid movement across genres and artistic communities. With over 30 million streams, a COLORS session, an appearance at Abbey Road Studios, and support from names like Outkast’s Big Boi, Questlove, and Raphael Saadiq, she continues to grow her international presence. Currently releasing her new EP Neve Azul (Oct 2025), Dos Santos deepens her exploration of Brazilian heritage through a soulful, spiritual, and emotionally resonant lens.

loophole

loophole are a trio at the pulse of contemporary music. Over years of exploration and creative experimentation, they have developed a distinctive sound that blends the expressiveness of jazz with atmospheric, beat-driven soundscapes. While Dave, Michel, and Claude form the core of the project, they regularly collaborate with guest musicians, allowing loophole’s musical universe to expand and evolve with each contribution.​​

Melodiesinfonie & Chrigi G. us Z.

Warm Up & Cool Down

Melodiesinfonie is a producer, composer and DJ from Zurich. He has released over ten albums since 2012 and is constantly touring internationally with his band. As a DJ, he plays genre-fluid music that is constantly reinventing itself but is definitely inspired by Black American music. Chrigi G. us Z. has been collecting music for a long time. Almost pathologically, actually. With GDS.FM, he has now found a way to make this music accessible. He puts together suitable playlists every day in the program. In the live shows, he invites guests and presents the latest discoveries. Finally, he presents his favorites mixed in clubs and bars or at festivals.

Vincent Courtois & Colin Vallon

«A Simple Fall»

&quot;A Simple Fall&quot; brings together two of Europe’s most distinctive voices in contemporary improvised music: French cellist Vincent Courtois and Swiss pianist Colin Vallon. Released by BMC Records, the Budapest label known as one of Europe’s most celebrated homes for contemporary classical and jazz, the album offers twelve pieces of uncommon intimacy and emotional clarity in contemporary minimalism. Courtois, who has collaborated with the likes of Rita Mitsouko, Christian Escoudé, Michel Petrucciani or even Michel Portal, is no stranger to the BMC catalogue. His tone, equally capable of lyricism and restraint finds a remarkable counterpart in Vallon’s unique sense of portion when it comes to piano. Vallon, an internationally celebrated soloist known by his releases over ECM Records, is renowned for a touch that balances fragility and quiet intensity, shaping silence as much as sound. The sessions that became A Simple Fall were marked by profound personal loss. The shadow of grief lends the album a restless depth, its music often suspended between stillness and turbulence. Therefore the album is overshadowed by an unflinching confrontation with absence. Minimalism defines the duo’s language here. Every phrase feels carved with care, every pause deliberate. The cello’s raw edge and the piano’s hushed resonance create a fragile architecture, never ornamental, always essential. This spareness amplifies the underlying emotions: resignation,tenderness, resilience.

Cello

Piano

Francesca Tandoi

Francesca Tandoi is an Italian pianist, singer, composer, and band leader, celebrated for her artistry, virtuosity, and unforgettable performances. She spent her formative years in the Netherlands, studying at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and later at Codarts Conservatory in Rotterdam, before launching her international career. Over the years, Francesca has led her ensembles on some of the most prestigious stages worldwide, including Dizzy’s Jazz Club at Lincoln Center, Bimhuis in Amsterdam and Hakuju Hall in Tokyo. Since 2014, Francesca has released seven albums as a bandleader and contributed to over twenty other recordings. Her critically acclaimed album Wind Dance (Atelier Sawano, Japan) was named among the Top 10 Best Jazz Albums of 2017 by Jazz Life magazine, which also recognized her arrangement of “Just You, Just Me” as one of the year’s most outstanding interpretations, hailing her as “one of the most exciting emerging talents on the international jazz scene.” Rooted in the jazz tradition of the previous century, her latest album, set to release in Spring 2026, will further cement her place in today&#x27;s jazz scene.

Kontrabass

Samson Philipps & Special Guests

Album Release «Once Upon a Now»

The Zurich-based duo Samson Philipps presents their debut album &quot;Once Upon a Now&quot;. With this album, they join a new wave of jazz that blends the dance floor and tradition in an inspiring symbiosis, where melodic playing meets rhythmic complexity. Samson Philipps consists of Philipp Bucholtz and Samuel Schmassmann – two friends with a shared vision: In a minimalist setup (keys and drums) both contribute to a sound that transcends the sum of its parts, intertwining and blending together. The duo blends contemporary jazz with influences from drum’n’bass, jungle, trip hop, and ambient electronica into a expansive, cinematic sound consisting of analog warmth, deep sub-basses, jazzy Rhodes lines, and electronically embellished drum patterns. They proved that this blend resonates with audiences in 2025 at the ZKB Jazz Prize Festival, where they won the Audience Award. Now they’ll be celebrating their latest album &quot;Once Upon a Now&quot;, released on the Berlin-based label XJAZZ! Music. Their goal: bringing jazz back onto the dancefloor. That’s why this Sunday concert will take place a bit later than usual.

Synthesizer

Rhodes

Trumpet

Congas

Yumi Ito

Critics consider the Swiss-Polish-Japanese singer to be one of the most exciting voices in contemporary jazz. It&#x27;s no wonder that she regularly sells out shows at festivals such as the JazzArt Festival and the Veneto Jazz Festival. Yumi Ito creates her own boundless worlds with her voice. A master of vocal improvisation, she moves effortlessly between genres and her roles as a singer, pianist, and composer. Her own music is correspondingly diverse, an ocean of art pop, jazz, and neoclassical. On stage, Ito acts like a Zen master: clear, reflective, and with a uniquely powerful energy. She is backed by her band: &quot;drum poet&quot; Iago Fernández on drums, Nadav Erlich on double bass, and Alessio Cazzetta on guitar. Together, they focus solely on creating musical worlds in the spirit of boundlessness. This concert recording was made with the support of Migros Culture Percentage.

Style Bakery meets Bounce Cypher Artists

Three weeks before this edition of Style Bakery, the legendary SRF Bounce Cypher takes place – the annual meeting place for the Swiss rap scene and an unofficial assessment of the current state of affairs on the mic. Six hours of exceptional circumstances, enormous YouTube live numbers, and maximum visibility for those involved. Together with host Pablo, we invite a selection of celebrated artists to perform their exclusive Cypher parts live – with a live band and audience. The band and the hand-picked freestyle vocalists also celebrate the unexpected together. A Cypher edition of a special kind – raw, real, and unforgettable. Joining us for this special edition of Style Bakery are Bounce Cypher artists Cali P, Eldorado FM, Lo &amp; Leduc, Benji Bonus, Poche Spanne, Saimon Disko, LCone, Manu913 &amp; Fau$tino, Vas Angelov, Parazh, Ryan87, Tony Castle, Supremnova, Zairandy, Sulaya and Svmthox.

Host

Aaron Parks Little Big

With his 2008 Blue Note debut album, Invisible Cinema, pianist Aaron Parks introduced himself as an exciting new voice in jazz. He impresses not only as a pianist, but also as a composer of melodies that are as complex as they are catchy. Seamlessly combining elements of modern jazz, indie rock, and Eastern musical styles, Parks creates a unique and personal sound. His playing is characterized by lyrical beauty, rhythmic complexity, and harmonic sophistication. These qualities also characterize his band, Little Big, which consists of guitarist Greg Tuohey, bassist David Ginyard Jr., and drummer Jongkuk Kim. At Moods, they will present their latest album, Little Big III, co-produced by Blue Note boss Don Was. The record exudes an extraordinary vitality that is both beautiful and raw, underlining the band&#x27;s powerful, modern concept of improvised, genre-spanning music in the 21st century.

Makaya McCraven

In 2015, the drummer, producer and sound artist Makaya McCraven released his groundbreaking album, In the Moment. This established him as one of the leading figures in jazz and beat-heavy music. Ten years later, McCraven is back with an exciting new project that takes his sound even further. In the autumn of 2025, the drummer released four EPs simultaneously. He remains true to his approach of reshaping music in new and unexpected ways and placing it in a new context. Entitled Techno Logic, PopUp Shop, Hidden Out! and The People&#x27;s Mixtape, the four EPs were produced in McCraven&#x27;s signature Organic Beat Music style, which he first introduced on In the Moment and has continued to develop ever since. His secret recipe is to subject live recordings of his drum-led improvisations to intensive post-production.

Fender-Rhodes E-Piano

Disk Jockey

Since 2017, we have been streaming some of the concerts and enabling the musicians to earn additional income - 70% of the subscription revenue goes directly to the musicians. With a subscription you get access to over 600 concerts and help to keep this project running.

Streaming

Over 700 video-on-demand and 40 live streams per year from jazz, global, blues, funk, soul and rap await you. Curated with playlists and recommendations from our program team. In addition, 70% of the subscription revenue goes directly to the musicians. With a subscription you support the artists and this project.