André Kunz
November 15, 2021
Born in Olten, Switzerland 1970, André Kunz is an alumni of the Swiss Jazz School in
Basel the Munich Guitar Institute in Germany and the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He is highly regarded in Swiss music circles as a composer and as a guitarist in various formats. As an innovator, he has released nineteen albums with original music over the last twenty years. Kunz is the recipient of many prestigious awards including the Olten Cultural Achievement Award in 2021, Special Achievement Awards in 2013 and 2020 from the Rentsch Foundation and the Solothurn Cantonal Music Award in 2005.
André Kunz has been performing for the last twenty years throughout Europe, Africa and the United States including notable venues such as The Crypt (Cape Town, South Africa), the Durban Jazz Center (South Africa), Ryles Jazz Club (Boston, US) Iconic Jazz Festival and Cully Jazz Festival (Switzerland), Silver Legacy Rino (Los Angeles, US), Jazz Club Moods (Zürich, Switzerland), Sunset Jazz Club (Paris, France), La Royal (London UK), Q Club (Berlin, Germany), as well as by invitation for the Swiss Parliament at the Capitol Building in Bern, Switzerland.
The vast spectrum of Kunz's sound, his innovative artistry, difficult to delimit, broadly traverses the terrains of jazz to funk and pop. What pervades all the work is a recognizable grounded and confident quality, imbued with a contained energy with or without tempo, with or without distorted guitar, with or without international collaboration from renowned musicians. The orientation to graceful melodies, renouncing spectacular riffs or exaggerated effects, indicate a maturity in his craft. Kunz's flair for composition enable him to create a sensitively differentiated sound and a life-affirming flow of thoughts with music.
His most recent album Sweet Soul is a work that developed over four years including a collaboration with 20 musicians from all over the globe. Self-produced in collaboration with Kriz Flew in Zürich and mastered by legendary engineer Rou Boustead at Resolution Mastering in California. Sweet Soul takes the listener on a sensual musical journey around the world, through a soundscape of 14 original compositions and masterful improvisations.
