Baloise session

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Concert at the Baloise Session 2014

The Baloise Session (until 2012 called AVO Session Basel ) is an indoor music festival in Switzerland at which international and national stars perform in a club table atmosphere. The festival with international reach takes place annually in October / November in Basel . The organizer is Session Basel AG.

A special feature of this Basel music event, in addition to the proximity to the stars, is the combination of two or three artists per concert evening who have a specific relationship to each other and thus tell the guests a musical story. This presents a thematic evening to the visitors, with artists who have a similar stylistic, historical or geographical background or who have something in common.

The music club seating with candlelight, the sometimes special program combinations and the big names in a small setting are described by the organizer as the trademark of the BALOISE SESSION. The total utilization has been around 95 to 100% for years.

founding

The Baloise Session emerged from the Rheinknie Session founded in autumn 1985 by Enrico Bonometti, Matthias Müller († 2016) and Stephan Werthmüller. The first edition of the festival in May 1986 started with five sold out concerts with artists such as Oscar Peterson , Albert Collins and Koko Taylor . The following year Fats Domino and Buddy Guy performed, among others .

Regional establishment

A groundbreaking milestone was set in 1988 with the signing of Miles Davis . As a result, the music event with its stylistic focus on blues , jazz and gospel was also noted outside of north-western Switzerland for the first time. Musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie , Michel Petrucciani and Herbie Hancock performed in Basel and Claude Nobs ( Montreux Jazz Festival ) joined the festival's patronage committee.

Step to the national festival

In 1995 the festival management decided to aim for a new positioning in terms of content and appearance in the medium term. The festival image was rejuvenated, the stylistic direction expanded to include world music , soul and funk and more emphasis was placed on engaging international artists.

In the following years, artists such as Sir Bob Geldof (1998), Ray Charles (1999), James Brown (2000), Chris de Burgh (2001), Paolo Conte (2002), Deep Purple (2003), Lionel Richie ( 2004), Simply Red (2005), Sir Elton John (2006), P! Nk (2006) Joe Cocker (2007), Amy Macdonald (2008), Grace Jones (2009), Tom Jones (2009), Jamiroquai (2010) , Mary J. Blige (2010), Laura Pausini (2011), Hurts (2011), Liza Minnelli (2011), Paul Anka (2011), Dionne Warwick (2012), Alice Cooper (2012), Rod Stewart (2012), Eric Clapton (2013), Gloria Estefan (2013), Lisa Stansfield (2014), Iggy Pop (2015), Toto (2015), Norah Jones (2016), Chris Rea (2017), Alicia Keys (2017), Lauryn Hill ( 2018), John Legend (2018), Herbert Grönemeyer (2019), Rag'n'Bone Man (2019) and Dido (2019) as guests.

TV and radio broadcast

All concerts are recorded integrally and published worldwide in over 140 countries on all 5 continents. As a result, the Basel Music Festival can also be seen in countries such as Japan, Argentina and China. Special program highlights are broadcast live by Eurovision or ARTE . 2006 saw the first Eurovision broadcast of the festival with Sir Elton John. This was followed in 2007 by the Europe-wide live broadcast of the concert with Katie Melua . It followed u. a. Live streams of the concerts of Alicia Keys and Lauryn Hill.

Various concerts are broadcast on Radio SRF 1 and SRF 3 . Some concerts are available on DVD.

Concert at the Avo Session Basel 2006

Name change in 2013

Until 2012, the festival was called AVO Session Basel for 15 years , named after the AVO Cigars brand of the sponsor, the Oettinger Davidoff Group , who had been presenting until then .

The festival has been called Baloise Session since 2013 , since Basler Versicherungen has been the presenting sponsor of the music festival ever since . The contract for the Baloise Session initially ran for five years and was extended to 2025.

Web links

Commons : Baloise Session  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Customers . In: Opacc - Extended Enterprise Software . ( opacc.ch [accessed on September 23, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Thomas Steiner: Liza Minnelli in Basel: Best old showbiz. , Concert review in the Badische Zeitung on October 27, 2011, accessed on November 29, 2012
  3. ↑ Back catalog Complete overview of previous performances on the festival website, accessed on January 28, 2019
  4. ↑ AVO SESSION is called BALOISE SESSION from 2013 ( memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), press release from August 22, 2012
  5. ↑ Basler Versicherungen secure the future of the Baloise Session until 2025 (PDF), media release from August 19, 2019, accessed on September 14, 2019