Season opening party: aperitif, “Sharing Realities” and concert with Strinning / Heinemann / Long feat. Peters

Season opening party

Sharing Realities at the Aperitif

Already during the aperitif, we open the space for Sharing Realities—an exchange with the musicians from Chicago about their current artistic realities in the United States.

Concert

Sebastian Strinning – tenor saxophone, bass clarinet

Jakob Heinemann – double bass

Norman W. Long – soundscapes

Natalie Peters – voice

The three musicians celebrate the present moment as their most precious asset and dedicate themselves fully to free improvisation. The trio brings together three of the most distinctive voices from the Chicago and Lucerne scenes. In Locarno, they perform alongside vocalist Natalie Peters, with whom Sebastian Strinning has previously toured internationally in the quartet SYNC. Fragile sounds hover like a subtle hum in the silence, only to erupt suddenly into violent, powerful sonic storms.

Sebastian Strinning (born 1 June 1985 in Brugg, raised in Othmarsingen, lives in Lucerne) is a Swiss-Swedish jazz musician active in free improvisation and experimental jazz. From 2006 to 2013, he studied at the Hochschule Luzern and the KMH in Stockholm with Urs Leimgruber, Hans Koch, Gerry Hemingway, and Fredrik Ljungkvist. He gained recognition for his expressive solo performances (including at Jazzfestival Schaffhausen and Stanser Musiktage) and has been co-organizer of concerts at Mullbau since 2013 as well as a member of the trio Tree Ear. Since 2014, he has co-curated the Dienstags_Jazz series at Kleintheater Luzern. Strinning received a creation grant from the Canton of Lucerne in 2016 and a studio scholarship in Chicago in 2017. His projects include Le String’Blö, Looty Trio, and the interdisciplinary trio Suzuribako. He has performed across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas and collaborated with numerous central figures of the international improvisation scene. His discography includes releases on Veto Records, Clean Feed, Wide Ear, Unit Records, and Leo Records.

Website: strinning.ch

Jakob Heinemann (born 1995 in Madison, Wisconsin) is a multidisciplinary artist working in sound art, free improvisation, experimental composition, photography, and acoustic ecology. His practice investigates sound as a form of cultural exchange and as a means to understand environments and communities. As a double bassist rooted in the Chicago free jazz scene, he performs in Devin Drobka’s avant-jazz trio and the outsider-Americana ensemble Alta Vista. His compositions employ open scores, field recordings, and spectral analysis to create participatory structures and document a sense of place in changing environments. Since 2023, Heinemann has served on the board of the Midwest Society of Acoustic Ecology. He founded the monthly improvisation series All The Sounds Are Done (Madison, WI) and co-curated the Splice Seriesin Chicago (2021–2022). He currently lives in Los Angeles and is pursuing an MFA in Composition and Experimental Sound Practices at the California Institute of the Arts. His recordings have appeared on Clean Feed, Ruination Recording Co, Party Perfect, Aerophonic Records, and his own label Kashe Editions.

Website: jakobheinemann.com

Norman W. Long is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes walking, listening, teaching, improvising, performing, recording, and composing. He works with field recordings and a wide range of modular and semi-modular synthesizers. Long has collaborated with artists including Angel Bat Dawid and the Brothahood, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Tatsuya Nakatani, Damon Locks, Mai Sugimoto, Joe Namy, and Sara Zalek. His recordings have been released on labels such as Hausu Mountain, LINE, Room40, Rural Situationism, and Blorpus Editions. His work explores the relationships between environment, community, and sonic memory, combining acoustic ecology, improvised performance, and electroacoustic research.

Website: normanwlong.wixsite.com/soundartdesign

Natalie Peters (D/CH, lives in Locarno) is a vocalist in improvised music, performer, and curator. She explores the human voice in both its simplest and most extreme, overflowing forms. The spontaneous, unpredictable, and playful nature of improvised music allows her to develop a vivid artistic language that reveals the surreal and ineffable aspects of human existence. In her work, she seeks presence and a natural form of communication that opens unexpected and unconventional possibilities, expanding the boundaries of listening. In her solo performances, she creates an intense presence that plays with the perception of time and resonates directly with space, audience, and herself. Memory, forgetting, visions, and states are consciously touched and reintegrated through precise and unconventional use of the voice. Current projects include duos with Sara Käser and Sebi Tramontana, the quartet SYNC, the ensemble Sous-Sol (Locarno), and the performative trio Con with Yara Li Mennel and Anna Rigamonti. She has performed at festivals and venues including Archipel Festival Genève, La Fête à Bruit (Biel), Performance Festival Oerlikon, Filmpodium Zürich, BangBang Social Elegance, and Museum Tinguely Basel, and regularly collaborates with artists and collectives such as Sebastian Strinning, Alfred Zimmerlin, Thomas Rohrer, Marina Tantanozi, Klaus Janek, Caroline Tallone, PANCH, and others.

Website: nataliepeters.ch