With our annual festival, we want to bring musicians together and create a space for what’s wild,  warm-hearted and experimental. It’s often about jazz, but not only – every year we expand the programme team with two or three people, each of whom brings their own favourites. This way, our circle is constantly growing.

Usually the musicians stay for several days, exchanging ideas and occasionally jamming. This has often led to the formation of new bands and exciting connections. And that’s exactly what we want – a musical workshop with a ski camp atmosphere.

Our story

It all began with a small group of young musicians from Bern and Lausanne who moved to Vienna seven years ago and who, together with the young and wild of the local jazz scene, formed a 16-piece ensemble that was stage ready in record time.

That was the 2007 Jazzwerkstatt Wien, a constantly overcrowded festival that lasted 24 nights where dubious drinks were served and composers with ages hardly above two-digit numbers picked up the quill. The idea was to develop the music of young musicians away from established clubs and festivals and then to make it heard – with resounding success.

Inspired by this experience, three of the Swiss travellers founded the Jazzwerkstatt Bern.

In 2008, in a programme cinema in the Bernese Matte that was bursting at the seams, Bernese and Viennese musicians shared the stage in the “EM Duell”, a singer who has long since established herself gave her first solo show, a now well-rehearsed brass section tuned up for the first time, the condensation dripped from the ceiling and the festival was moved to the PROGR cultural centre the following year due to lack of space, where we are still based today.

And we are delighted to say that the Jazzwerkstatt has grown into an international festival that is an integral part of the Swiss music scene. A playground for music that refuses to be labelled.