FRANCESCA GAZA
MUSIC & Works
WORKS & COMMISSIONS
Francesca Gaza’s work unfolds across several intertwined projects, each exploring a different intersection of musical worlds.
Kugelförmigkeit is her flagship ensemble, uniting twelve baroque, Renaissance, and contemporary instruments — from theorbo and baroque flute to electric guitar, bass clarinet, and drums — into a shared sonic language. Their debut album Kugelförmigkeit (2021, Whales Records) was named Album of the Year by the Wiener Zeitung. Their second album, Crown Shyness, will be released in August 2026 on New Amsterdam Records, New York. Pre-order album here.
Lilac for People is her octet rooted in jazz, art pop, and contemporary songwriting. Their debut album (2019, Auand Records) was praised by Downbeat Magazine and Billboard among others, and their second album Sfiorire was released in 2022 on Tûk Music. This song-driven, orchestral path continues in aminth, her quartet weaving together folk, jazz, and Renaissance traditions in an intimate, song-based format — smaller in scale, but carrying the same spirit of blending the ancient and the contemporary.
Katom is a quintet of five eclectic musicians from Catalonia, Chile, Italy, Israel, and South Africa, based in Basel. Their music builds intense walls of sound through ambient textures that combine improvised jazz with through-composed folky song cycles, inviting listeners into uncharted territories of timbre and harmony. Voice and trumpet float between consonant melodies and forced dissonances, while drums and bass anchor ethereal guitar lines that interweave across shifting sound layers. Their debut album was released on Hout Records in 2023.
Basel Jazz Orchestra — since 2023, Gaza has served as conductor of the Basel Jazz Orchestra, performing monthly at the Bird’s Eye Jazz Club in Basel and commissioning new works from composers and arrangers across Europe.
As a composer, her work has been commissioned by Ensemble Proton Bern, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Baroque orchestra Il Pomo d’Oro, choir PourChoeur, Duo Blickwechsel, Kambrass Quintet, and others. Her choral cycle Post Sappho (2025) and her upcoming work for Renaissance flute consort Hourglass reflect an ongoing dialogue between old and new. For a complete list of works, click here.
aminth
> aminth
aminth is a set of kaleidoscopic, articulate and emotionally intense songs written by Francesca for herself and her quartet, a Basel- based ensemble that combines the intoxicating and mysterious sounds of medieval and Renaissance flutes played by Liane Sadler, with the shimmering sounds of electronics applied to a Renaissance spinet with Francesca’s voice on the piano, as well as the airy and vibrant timbre of Fabian Willmann’s tenor saxophone meeting the virtuosity of Nadav Erlich’s double bass. The result is a combination of daring songs with an evocative and contemplative character, enhanced by colourful and surprising orchestrations and improvisations.
The quartet is a testament to the collective creativity and musical exploration that defines the fluid landscape of musical genres. Indeed, the project’s music is inspired by windows and doors, rooms and bridges, thresholds as places of transition, permanence and exploration of the other and oneself. Francesca is inspired by ancient texts on love and gives the name ‘aminth’ (from the Etruscan ‘to love’ or ‘cupid’) to explore this theme.
The quartet features some of Francesca’s favourite musicians and collaborators from four different countries, Israel, Australia, Germany and Italy. The four musicians collaborate with openness and a great desire to experiment and create a personal sound world to tell and dwell in for a few moments.
aminth is:
Francesca Gaza vocals, spinettina da gamba, piano
Liane Sadler renaissance, medieval, baroque flutes
Fabian Willmann tenor saxophone, bass clarinet
Nadav Erlich doublebass
KUGELFÖRMIGKEIT
Under the creative direction of composer and singer Francesca Gaza, the ensemble Kugelförmigkeit weaves together elements of contemporary music, experimental jazz, Renaissance, and Baroque into a distinctive musical language. Their first album Kugelförmigkeit (2021) received widespread recognition, including being named Album of the Year by the Wiener Zeitung. In October 2024, with support from SRF, the ensemble recorded an entirely new program, which will be released between 2025-2026.
With twelve musicians and an unconventional instrumentation—ranging from electric guitar to theorbo, Baroque flute, bass clarinet, and trombone—the ensemble explores the spherical nature of time. Time intersects with the timeless as the electric guitar merges with the Renaissance theorbo, while the Baroque flute elegantly winds around the warm sounds of bass clarinet and trombone. Meanwhile, piano and harpsichord engage in dialogue with both grooving and floating bass and percussion lines, and the melodies of the voice are carried by the lamenting pathos of the viola da gamba.
With subtle musical references and experimental approaches, Kugelförmigkeit invites its audience into a profound exploration of cyclical temporality through sound. Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF)
In October 2024, the ensemble presented their new program, Kugelförmigkeit: IIte Zeit, in a series of daring performances across Switzerland:
- October 25, 2024 – Premiere at Gare du Nord, Basel
- October 26, 2024 – BeJazz, Bern
- October 28, 2024 – Kulturhaus Helferei, Zurich
- October 29, 2024 – Public Concert SRF Studio Basel
In the past, Francesca’s Ensemble was awarded the first prize in the “Fraumünsterhof” composition competition for the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage in September 2021 with her piece “Isoritmo/ Alice’s Fall”, with which she performed in the art installation in the Münsterhof in Zurich. The project was commissioned for a second new work by the Apples & Olives Festival Zurich in March 2022 under the direction of pianist Nik Bärtsch and American composer Judd Greenstein. This sparked a collaboration between Francesca Gaza and composer and violinist Helena Winkelman, who then collaborated on a new work presented at the UNESCO World Heritage Müstair Monatsery in July 2022, which was recorded and co-produced by SRF.
Listen:
https://francescagaza.bandcamp.com/album/kugelf-rmigkeit-live-at-convent-of-st-john-m-stair
From influences of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets to Carlo Gesualdo’s Miserere melody and 14th century Orlando Di Lasso’s Bicinium structures, the project will invite the listener in a new world of sound and was published on the 25th of June on Whales Records. Order on: https://francescagaza.bandcamp.com
LILAC FOR PEOPLE
Lilac for People is an octet lead by Francesca.
The first album of the band was released in 2019 by Auand Records and positively reviewed by critics, such as Downbeat Magazine, All About Jazz, Musikansich, Billboard a.o. and has won the 1st prize of the national composing competition by MIDJ (Italian Jazz Musicians Association), as well as the 1st prize of Paolo Fresu’s JazzAlguer.
The ensemble, consisting of voice, trumpet, tenor and baritone saxophone, piano, guitar, electric bass and drums, is an unconventional band, in which the writing and arranging tasks are the prerogative of Francesca Gaza,
but their individual personalities, skills and wide-ranging taste for jazz, art pop, folk, and classical music have long blended together to form a cohesive sound, both sophisticated and playful, combining nostalgic influences with a contemporary attitude.
The second album by ‘Lilac for People’, entitled ‘sfiorire’, will be released by Tǔk Music in June 2022.
‘Sfiorire’, which literal translation means ‘whithering’, is an orchestral work that contemplates the fading of things, people, words, communication, actions, nature and age, as well as overcoming the loss of wholeness and attempts to capture and address both aggression and manipulation as well as the rediscovery of naivety and the envisioning of beauty.
Each gem-like song is distinct, from the anthemic opener “Flowers, Eyes, Lips, Tombs” to the rock-infused and aggressive “being tall” to “sfiorire”, the title that gives the album its name and portrays the band’s Italian-language debut.
The album’s ten tracks reveal an extension of the exuberant instrumentation of Lilac for People’s previous work and plunge into even richer and more articulated territory, with choral vocals, trombone, tuba bass, bass clarinet, tenor horn and synth layers.
Francesca Gaza’s writing is emblematic of an emerging generation and a circle of composers and performers who have made it their trademark to transcend traditional genre distinctions.
We exist since 2016 and are a very close group of friends and collaborators. We joined in 2016, and the project has won various competitions in Italy including Jazzalguer, MIDJ Composition Prize 2017 and has been invited to important festivals such as Il Jazz Italiano per le Terre del Sisma, Genius Loci Firenze, Piano Piano Festival, Valbadia Jazz festival, Stresa Festival, Grey Cat Jazz Festival, Pärkli Jam Festival (Switzerland), Import Export Festival (Germany) to name a few and has been reviewed extensively both nationally and internationally by specialist critics (All About Jazz and Downbeat, Musikansich, Billboard).
Lilac for People is:
Francesca Gaza
vocals, composition, arrangement
Jacopo Fagioli
trumpet, flügelhorn, tenor horn, trombone
Francesco Panconesi
tenor sax
Federico D’Angelo
baritone sax, bass clarinet, tuba
Lorenzo Pellegrini
guitar, vocals
Luca Sguera
piano, prophet, keys, electronics
Alessandro Mazzieri
electric bass, electronics
Mattia Galeotti
drums
Paolo Fresu:
«Francesca Gaza’s new work Lilac for People is true poetry and carries with it an original sound as a result of the work she has been doing with her ensemble. It is almost a collective. A wide ensemble that crafts music through a shared breath, capable of seamlessly combining acoustic and electric sounds with boldness and an expert hand. Between Strange Poet and I Get Along Without You Very Well there is a world of passion and feeling that makes Lilac for People one of the most beautiful albums of this time. The JazzAlguer Mediterrani contest is proud to have contributed to the emergence of such an extraordinary project.»
COLLABORATIONS
> KATOM
Katom is a band of five eclectic musicians coming from Catalonia, Chile, Italy, Israel and South Africa who are based in Basel, Switzerland. Their music creates intense walls of sound through ambient textures that combine improvised jazz with through-composed folky song cycles and forge a dynamic resonance with the listeners by inviting them in uncharted territories of timbre and harmony.
Voice and trumpet are used as both instrumental textures and prominent centrepieces that float between consonant melodies and forced dissonances – drums and bass anchor the elegantly provided ethereal guitar lines which intertwine and tailor diverse sound layers. The typical roles of each instrument are abandoned with eagerness, leaving space for a surprising musical direction in constant evolution.
After their EP Release in 2020, the band will release their debut alum on Hout Records in June 2023.
Katom is:
James McClure (ZAF) trumpet
Francesca Gaza (IT/DE) vocals, synth
Martin Theurillat (CHL/CH) guitar
Nadav Erlich (IS) double bass
Jordi Pallarès (ES) drums
> Basel Jazz Orchestra
The Basel Jazz Orchestra (BJO), established in 2023, comprises 18 professional musicians, all actively engaged in the vibrant musical scene of Basel. Serving as a dynamic hub for composers both within and beyond its ranks, the ensemble fosters a diverse array of musical expressions. Its members, hailing from various international backgrounds and boasting eclectic musical interests, contribute to the rich tapestry of the orchestra’s repertoire.
Under the artistic direction of Francesca Gaza (DE-IT), a distinguished composer and vocalist with expertise spanning contemporary jazz, baroque, and improvised music, the BJO cultivates an environment ripe for innovation and collaboration. Gaza’s visionary leadership empowers composers to explore new avenues of expression, pushing the boundaries of jazz and fostering artistic growth within the ensemble.
Beyond its artistic endeavors, the BJO plays a pivotal role in nurturing a thriving jazz community within Basel. Through its performances, workshops, and outreach initiatives, the orchestra engages with audiences of all ages and backgrounds, igniting a passion for jazz and fostering a sense of belonging within the city. By providing a platform for emerging and established composers alike, the BJO contributes to the cultivation of a vibrant and inclusive musical ecosystem, ensuring that Basel remains a hub of creativity and inspiration for years to come.
