Michael Wertmüller

Whether he is dealing with a classical orchestra or a jazz band makes no difference to the Swiss composer and jazz musician Michael Wertmüller, because he is equally rooted in both worlds and sees them as ONE world. He completed his education at the Swiss Jazz School, the Bern University of Arts and the Sweenlick Conservatory in Amsterdam before studying composition with Dieter Schnebel at the Berlin University of Arts. As a percussionist, he played in the Bern Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, while at the same time touring the world for decades as a drummer with renowned jazz greats in various bands and formations, but most notably in the trio FULL BLAST with the late great saxophone and free music legend Peter Brötzmann. Merging styles is never the aim of his work as a composer. Rather, he seeks to outwit the widespread compulsion to categorise and classify so that his audience experiences music as he does: as a utopian process that turns many small spaces into one huge space that defies mental and physical limitations: with transcendental virtuosity and disregard for any stylistic purity rules.

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FULL BLAST
STEAMBOAT SWITZERLAND