Ernest Berner

"Ernest" Robert Berner (born April 12, 1904 in Bern , † February 19, 1966 in Zurich ) was a Swiss jazz pianist , impresario and publicist. “In the early days of Swiss jazz”, according to Bruno Spoerri , he was “one of the most important musicians and organizers in Switzerland”.

Live and act

Berner, who as a commercial apprentice was also a conservatory student, played in small salon orchestras at an early age and performed jazz pieces with his Alice Jazz Band in the early 1920s. In 1925 he moved to Paris as a fashion illustrator , where he soon founded a theater and music agency and took piano lessons from "a Paul Whiteman pianist". After a short time he stepped in for the pianist Clément Doucet at the nightclub Le boeuf sur le Toit . In 1931 he returned to Bern after the agency got into financial difficulties. There he worked as a program designer for Dancing Chikito and also performed there as a pianist. In 1932 he became the editor of the international magazine Jazz for the German-speaking area; he wrote there under the pseudonym Roy Brooks .

He moved to Zurich with his wife and son in 1933, where he founded the first music store specializing in jazz, The Jazz House . The following year he organized the first Swiss jazz concert with Louis Armstrong , which took place in the Zurich Tonhalle . In addition, he was repeatedly active as a pianist, u. a. with Leo Laurent, and founded his own band, the Berry’s (with drummer Berry Peritz, guitarist Billy Toffel and bassist Fred Jaquillard). In 1935 he brought Coleman Hawkins to Switzerland and accompanied him with this band, but in 1937 he also made recordings in a trio with Hawkins and bassist René Bertschy . In 1938, Berner became the publisher of the Swiss film newspaper , which also reported on jazz, mostly through his colleague Arthur Goepfert. After 1945, active activities as a pianist faded into the background. In 1953 he sold the film newspaper. In 1951 he supported his son André (* 1926) at the start of the Zurich amateur jazz festival and was a member of the jury until 1960. Because of his admiration for Ernest Hemingway , he was called "Ernest".

Discographic notes

• Coleman Hawkins & the Berry’s (Parlophone, 1936)

literature

• Bruno Spoerri (Hrsg.): Biographical Lexicon of Swiss Jazz CD supplement to: Bruno Spoerri (Hrsg.): Jazz in Switzerland. History and stories . Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0739-6
• Ueli Staub : Portrait of a Jazz Pioneer (A.Berner, 1994)

Web links

• JazzIndex on Ernest Berner