francesca gaza.

Francesca Gaza is an Italian/German singer, composer and arranger with romanian roots currently living in Basel, Switzerland. 

As a bandleader, sidewoman and arranger she is working extensively in jazz-, antique-, pop, contemporary-classical and experimental music.

Her project Kugelförmigkeit, written during the pandemic, is a ten-piece ensemble revealing a sympathetic connection between seemingly disparate principles, fusing instruments from Jazz, Renaissance, Baroque and Pop into a musical language of its own.

The unusual configuration of instruments is woven into an imaginary spherical space where the proximity of present, past and future is explored and suspended.

From influences of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets to Carlo Gesualdo’s Miserere Melody and 14th century Orlando Di Lasso Bicinium structures, the compositions establish a particular relationship to each other, a sort of counterpoint between a modernist unease arising from the consciousness of the passage of time, and a romantic yearning for the comfort that can be found in unity and stasis.

She was awarded the National Italian Composition Prize in 2017, the 1st prize of the Jazzalguer Festival lead by Paolo Fresu in 2018, the Umbria Jazz Competition Prize and a Berklee College of Music Summer Program Scholarhsip in 2013. 

Francesca is one of the composers featured in the project Vicentino21 Symposium.