In 2017, the Schaffhausen Jazz Festival gifted its archive to the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Together with the Swiss National Sound Archives, the latter has now catalogued and digitalised the material. It is now available to the public in the shape of an online archive.
Founded in 1990, the Schaffhausen Jazz Festival has been a showcase for the Swiss Jazz scene for years. Its programme regularly features the greats of the Swiss Jazz improvisation scene. However, the festival also provides a platform for young musicians every year. For the festival’s 30th anniversary in May 2019, the public was in for a treat: it was presented with an online platform that allowed them to immerse themselves in the festival’s history. In addition to concert photos and magazine articles, they could find live footage of celebrated Jazz musicians such as Irène Schweizer, Sylvie Courvoisier, Yilian Cañizares, Christy Doran and Daniel Humair.
To lay the groundwork for the online archive, the festival gave its treasure chest of material to the Music Library of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in May 2017. Together with the Swiss national Sound Archives and with the support of other specialised institutions such as Swiss national radio and TV broadacaster SRF and the Central and University Library Lucerne, they processed 3,000 artist biographies, 2,500 hours of sound recordings, media reports and images, videos and promotional material.
www.archivjazzfestival.ch
