Valérie Portmann

Valérie Portmann (* 1958 in Zurich ) is a Swiss pianist and jazz manager. She heads the jazz department at the Bern University of the Arts .

Portmann studied music in Zurich with a major in piano with Sava Savoff (graduated in 1981); She continued her education at the Swiss Jazz School until 1983 . She then worked as a music teacher at the Rämibühl Cantonal School in Zurich. Since 1995 she has increasingly taken on management activities in the cultural sector. From 1994 she was organizationally active in the Zurich jazz club Moods , which she headed as artistic director in 2000. For the Swiss national exhibition Expo.02 she was project manager for jazz, but also stage manager. She then did an apprenticeship as a media woman and worked as an editor at DRS in the radio play department. In addition, she continued to perform as a classical concert pianist.

Since September 1, 2006, she has been the head of the jazz department at the Bern University of the Arts. The reorientation she initiated has been publicly criticized by former heads of the Swiss Jazz School .

Portmann was married to the saxophonist Urs Blöchlinger .

Web links

• Website at the University of Bern
• Interview ( Memento from May 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Uprising of the Jazz Patriarchs , Der Bund , February 16, 2013