CAT MARIA MALOU TRIO

Marie-Louise Schneider: voice, violin Maria Luisa Pizzighella: percussion Catalina Gutiérrez: bass clarinet

Marie-Louise Schneider (*1993) is a vocal artist, improviser, musician, and dancer. She works as a freelance performer with her own musical and theatrical projects, appearing mainly in Switzerland and Berlin. Through various artistic residencies (most recently Lakestudios Berlin 2024) and in Basel, she creates solo or collective works through complex creative processes. Her projects have been supported by the Fachausschuss Musik, Fondation Suisa, Kulturraum Schaffhausen, and other private foundations.

In her in-depth exploration of what is still intangible, she seeks to create sensory connections through her preferred media: sound, movement, space, and language. She is the initiator and member of the collective Tabula Rasa (multimedia performance, musical performance), the formation BRauchpoesie (improvisation, poetry), the duo with Catalina Gutiérrez (improvisation and poetry), the duo Schiller/Schneider with Lamento (contemporary music theatre), and the duo Seidenkord (vocal folk music). She also performs solo with her own creations such as dichter innen raum 2024 (voice, dance, violin, text, scenography), Luftbrotmehl 2023 (voice, dance), and Malou durch den Wind 2022 (voice, poetry, violin), among others.

She won the Contempo Prize 2021 for a “readable concert,” published during the pandemic in the Arbeiterzeitung Schaffhausen. In the same year, she received the half-year scholarship of the Canton of Schaffhausen to deepen her artistic work in Berlin. Marie-Louise Schneider studied classical singing at the Winterthur Conservatory (2 years), music and movement/rhythmics at the Bern University of the Arts (BA of Arts), and improvisation (focusing on voice, voice combined with movement, and violin) at the Basel Academy of Music (MA of Arts).

https://www.marie-louise-schneider.ch

Maria Luisa Pizzighella is a versatile musician with a Master of Arts in Specialised Music Performance – Free Improvisation (FHNW Basel, 2022). Previously, she earned a bachelor’s degree in classical percussion and a master’s degree in pedagogy in Novara, Italy.

She works in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary contexts, for example with dancer and choreographer Julia Klockow in tell.me.sth.new! at E-Werk Freiburg, and took part in Dakota Wayne’s Welcome to the Radio for the SRF 2 Kultur program Classical and Jazz Talents. Her composition Deliver us from Evil was performed at the Museum der Kulturen Basel.

She has played at festivals such as Zeiträume (Basel), Fuorisalone (Milan), and in various international projects, including collaborations with Katie Duck and Enrico Ascoli. She has released several albums, including Oblò with Phase Duo (2023). As a classical percussionist, she has performed with the Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi di Milano, the Camerata Ducale, and has won several prizes as a soloist, both in orchestral and solo repertoire.

https://marylpizz.bandcamp.com/track/deliver-us-from-evil

Catalina Gutiérrez (*1984) was born in Temuco, southern Chile, and began her musical training at the age of 9 with the piano. At 17 she entered the Conservatory of the Universidad Católica de Chile (Santiago), but after three years decided to start over, dedicating herself to the clarinet.

She graduated in 2012 from the same institution and then moved to Strasbourg to continue her studies. Her musical career took a new direction when she left classical studies to join the jazz and improvised music department of the Strasbourg Conservatory.

Since then, she has devoted herself to improvised music, collaborating with musicians such as Diego Manuschevich, Diego Aguirre, Kazue Ogasawara, Evan Vercoutre, Janis Fedotovs, Javier Frausto, and Jad El Khechen, among others. In 2021, she completed her studies at the Basel Music Academy in the improvisation program.

Photo by: Arsène OTT