SC’ÖÖF from Switzerland are the recipients of the 4th EJN Zenith Award for emerging artists

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Ejn

We are very happy to announce SC’ÖÖF from Switzerland as the winner of the 4th Zenith Award for emerging artists - an initiative launched by the Europe Jazz Network (EJN) in collaboration with Irish organisation IMC’s 12 Points Festival, and supported by Creative Europe.

With two horns, drums, electronics and guitar, SC’ÖÖF bring traditional jazz instruments into an avant-garde soundscape. Their music is fuelled both by their passion for odd grooves and a consciousness of social responsibility in their creative practice. The band is composed of Noah Arnold (Saxophone), Elio Amberg (Saxophone), Christian Zemp (Guitar) and Vincent Glanzmann (Drum Kit & Electronics), and so far published 3 albums: CDR003SA (2022), Weaving Elephants (2020) and Kreidenfels (2017). The quartet was supported by Pro-Helvetia as part of their high priority support scheme 2022-2024 and was selected to perform as part of the official jazzahead! showcase programme in 2023.

The EJN Zenith Award was created in 2019 to shine a spotlight on a remarkable European ensemble or solo project working in creative jazz and improvised music. The winner is selected from the carefully curated 12 acts performing at the 12 Points festival, all coming from different European countries. The Award celebrates the ensemble’s ability to break musical boundaries while demonstrating an original approach to performance and a potential for a strong, ongoing international career. The name “Zenith Award” was adopted to reflect the level of excellence in the winning act, and its capacity to show a way forward for the future of creative music in Europe. Previous recipients of the Zenith Award were Trio Heinz Herbert from Switzerland in 2019, Nout from France in 2023, and Liv Andrea Hauge trio from Norway in 2024.

For each award edition, the Europe Jazz Network nominates an international jury of artistic directors, all EJN members, to choose the winner out of the 12 bands performing at the 12 Points festival. This year, 12 Points festival took place in presence, after a few years of pause, between 24-27 September 2024 at G Livelab in Tampere, Finland. Please see below the full list of the 12 bands that performed at the festival, coming from Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland.

Comment from the award jury: “SC’ÖÖF creates imaginative soundscapes with a conglomerate of sounds traversing between computer generated pulses and acoustic bursts of expression, all meticulously orchestrated into an original sound. Their musical stories are rooted in the industrial realm, but yet the group produce an overall organic, human-like fluent feel. The outcome is a percussive, rhythmically unpredictable, melodically compelling experimental jazz-dub-d’n’b-breakbeat-hiphop-noise set that exudes great musicianship, boldly taking on the freedom of expression.

With their fresh, eclectic and captivating approach SC’ÖÖF can build bridges between jazz fans and audiences of different genres and has a potential to bring the needed generational refreshment of jazz festivals. Thus, the jury believes the band’s future on Europe’s festival and club stages is bright and it is proud to present the Zenith Award to SC’ÖÖF.”

The Zenith Award jury for this year was composed by: Christoph Huber (Porgy & Bess, Austria), Martyna van Nieuwland (Music Meeting, the Netherlands), Ragnhild Menes (Kongsberg jazzfestival, Norway), Tina Lešničar (Ljubljana Jazz festival/Cankarjev dom, Slovenia), Max von Pretz (Südtirol Jazzfestival Alto Adige, Italy), Kenneth Killeen (12 Points/Improvised Music Company, Ireland).

On being named the winners of the Zenith Award 2024, SC’ÖÖF commented "We’re extremely jazzed to win the Zenith Award! It’s even better than finding the last piece of pizza at a party- pure joy! The whole 12 Points festival was a fantastic whirlwind of creativity, where we laughed, and soaked in inspiration! Thank you for this honour- we can’t wait to keep creating music that makes you move and maybe even question your life choices!"

SC’ÖÖF will now receive an outstanding prize of performances and promotional opportunities from among the EJN membership, including a prestigious showcase at the European Jazz Conference 2025 in front of over 400 music professionals from all over Europe and beyond in Bari, Italy (25-28 September 2025) as part of the showcase programme of the Conference.

EJN will also support additional international tours and concerts inside the EJN membership, setting up a communication and professional development strategy to promote the Zenith Award winners through its members and contacts and assisting in developing the winning act’s visibility and viability in the international arena. 

About SC’ÖÖF
SC’ÖÖF is an experimental band that has formed its own radical sonic language, which is at once refreshingly adventurous and in-your-face. A strong affection for captivatingly odd grooves and an excessive live energy makes Sc’ööf an exciting bag of surprises.

Their contemplative attitude and their joy for fundamental research is strongly audible in their music and their creative process. Extending this attitude to the questions of social resonance and cultural relevance, the members of Sc’ööf have acted as a driving force to form «Club Dänemark» which acts at once as a collective think tank, transdisciplinary event organizer and record label.

Bandcamp / Instagram / Website

The bands participating at 12 Points festival in 2024:


About 12 Points festival
12 Points is a dynamic festival of emerging European jazz established in 2007 by Dublin-based Improvised Music Company (IMC). The festival is nomadic, alternating between Dublin and other vibrant European cities. The 4 day festival presents 12 emerging acts from 12 different European countries. Over 600 young musicians from across Europe have performed at 12 Points since 2007. 12 Points is programmed each year through peer recommendations from a wide pool of jazz promoters and organisations across Europe, all members of the Europe Jazz Network, to seek out and recommend the most exciting emerging acts from national and local jazz scenes across the continent. This exploratory approach to finding new talent earned 12 Points the inaugural Europe Jazz Network award for ‘Adventurous Programming’ in 2012. The last edition of 12 Points took place in Tampere, Finland 25-28 September 2024, in partnership with G LiveLab.

www.12points.ie

* the band unfortunately had to cancel their participation at the last minute for health reasons

Photo © Sami Sorasalmi