The Story
An inner voice, told on the trumpet
Michael Gassmann (*1964) is a Swiss jazz trumpeter and composer who has spent a lifetime turning improvisation into storytelling.
Born in a village near Zurich, he began playing trumpet at eight. His education was not always a formal one — he later re-learned the instrument as a young adult — but he was drawn early to music that breathed with improvisation. The discovery of the blues scale at ten opened a new world: he began to play things “not in the chart,” a small sacrilege in his surroundings, and never stopped.
In 1987 he went to the summer seminars at Siena Jazz, and returned in 1989 and 1990. There he met Enrico Rava, whom he would count as his mentor for many years, and there he turned toward his inner voice — contemporary improvisation rooted in the lyrical history of jazz, with Rava, Miles Davis and Chet Baker as guiding stars.
Siena gave him more than a teacher. Paolo Fresu, generous, a great musician and a friend; Michele Calgaro, who would invite him on his first Italian tour; and players such as Stefano Bollani and Stefano Di Battista — all of them young then — who showed him how endless the universe of jazz is.
Those summers, with his Italian lineage on his mother’s side, opened lasting collaborations with some of Italy’s most distinguished musicians — Stefano Battaglia, Claudio Fasoli, Roberto Bonati and others — partners in a continuing quest for risk and story.
Michael can be heard on more than forty records, as leader and as sideman, on labels including Universal, Splas(h) Records, ParmaFrontiere and ECM.
