International Jazz Banjo Newsletter

It has been a month since Ruedi Bleuer presented his "first ever" Swiss Banjo Festival near Zurich. This friendly gathering of European banjo players was one of the highlights of my tour of Europe with my wife, Nida. Thanks to her, and to a Czech lady named Lilly Pavlak for the photo accompanying this article.
Ruedi chose the best hotel in the area, not only for location and accommodations, but for the large concert hall found in the same building. The renovated hotel actually dates back to the 1300's, along with most of the beautiful old buildings in this historic part of Bulach, a suburb of Zurich near the airport. There was ample room for displays by 2 vendors: Franz Elsener, who owns the music store "Saitensprung", and Hellmuth Fischer, who brought along some of his banjos which are for sale on his new website, "www.banjoparadise.ch".
In a previous article about this festival, written by Achim Hippenstiel, you can read a list of the performers from each concert. I did not know all of the musicians, but was impressed by the talent, and by the variety of banjo tunings heard each night. On Friday, Sean Moyses not only MC’d the show, but he entertained wonderfully, and helped accompany Ruedi Bleuer’s daughter, Daniella, when she sang with her dad and his band.In fact, we all tried to spread ourselves around , musically, to join in with others when appropriate, just to give support where needed to make the show a success. This really was a friendly gathering. I always enjoy playing along with Ruedi, as you can see in the top picture. If you have not heard him play, you should really check out his very listenable CD.
Ruedi kindly offered me the last portion of each night’s concert, so at the end , I invited every banjo player up to the stage to play a few final rousing songs together. We concluded by getting some of the members to join us for the large "finale band". After the stage shows, we got a chance to do more jamming into the wee hours..with Sean on the huge bass banjo!
Saturday was full of workshops. I offered a shorter (two hour) tenor banjo workshop in the morning, and Bernard Schwenter and Rainer Daub each provided their workshops in the afternoon. Sean Moyses had to leave town by then to play another engagement, so Ruedi introduced the Saturday night concert. The audience heard a nice new variety of songs from mostly the same performers, and everyone had a great time. After the final concert and jamming was over, many of us continued our partying in the hotel restaurant.
With the obvious success of this Swiss Banjo Festival, Ruedi is now preparing for next year’s event- with even grander plans in the works! I’m sure Ruedi will keep you posted on this website, so try to make plans to attend next summer in Switzerland.

Greetings,
Tim Allan.