on the awarding of the German Record Critics’ Honorary Prize to Patrik Landolt, founder of the Swiss label Intakt

Back when people still wrote letters, sent demo CDs or faxes, or simply made phone calls, Marino Pliakas, a member of the trio Steamboat Switzerland, called me and asked if I had listened to the CD he had sent me. “Not yet, but Steamboat sounds more like Dixieland jazz to me, and the LOFT isn’t the right place for that,” was my reply. Anyone familiar with the music of Steamboat Switzerland will realize how wrong I was, so I listened to the CD, loved it, and on November 29, 1999, the Swiss trio played their first concert at the LOFT—the beginning of a fruitful collaboration that lasted for years, as it led to more and more contacts with musicians from the Swiss scene, which was certainly also due to the fact that Nils Wogram, Gerry Hemingway, and many other musicians were now working in Switzerland. And if you want to become known in a scene, you have to have friends – so through our collaboration with Steamboat drummer and communications genius Lucas Niggli, the LOFT also became known in Switzerland.

Today, Lucas is the first chairman of the association that runs the Intakt label. It is no coincidence that Patrik Landolt chose the LOFT for his tribute with the German Record Critics’ Honorary Award, because if you read the names of the musicians he has produced in the Intakt catalog, you will hardly find anyone who has not played here at least once. Patrik has also used the LOFT for one or two productions, for example, in 2013, the recordings for the album Arcanum (Intakt CD 232) were made here, which was awarded the German Record Critics’ Quarterly Prize the following year. The musicians involved were vocal artist Andreas Schaerer and…Lucas Niggli.

But there are other obvious similarities: not only are the founders of Intakt and LOFT almost the same age, they also share the same enthusiasm and passion for improvised music in its many forms. Both companies were founded in 1986 (LOFT, founded in 1986 in the “Unter Krahnenbäumen” premises, did not appear as a concert venue until 1989). And another surprise: Bert Noglik – who gave the laudatory speech for Patrik Landolt on the evening of May 28 – wrote the liner notes for Frank Gratkowski’s first CD, Artikulationen, which was released in 1991 on LOFT’s own label, 2ndFLOOR edition, as CD 001.

We are proud to welcome this highly esteemed colleague, who has not only founded and run an outstanding label, but has also made a name for himself as a curator and concert organizer on the Swiss scene, to this award ceremony with a three-day festival at LOFT.
We look forward to the concerts and congratulate him warmly on his well-deserved award.

Hans Martin Müller, Urs Benedikt Müller
und das LOFT-Team