Born out of the Taktlos Festival, Intakt Records worked closely with the Fabrikjazz organizing team for the first few years, which organized the Takt- los Festival and the jazz concert series at the Rote Fabrik in Zürich on a voluntary basis. In the early years of Fabrikjazz, Irène Schweizer, Patrik Landolt, Fredi Bosshard, Giovanni Borrelli, Fernanda Pedrina, Sergio Agustoni, Edith Kuster and Rosmarie A. Meier were the activists of the organizing team. Several of the first Intakt releases were produced in the context of the Taktlos Festival and Fabrikjazz concerts. In 1990, Intakt Records was given legal status as a “non-profit association” and became independent of Fabrikjazz. According to its mission, the association “aims to document improvised and composed music in the field of contemporary jazz and jazz-related genres”!– with a focus on the European and Swiss jazz scenes. The association – and not the label managers – holds the musical rights transferred by the artists to Intakt Records, which are administered by the Swiss Copyright Society SUISA. The first board of the association is made up of musician Irène Schweizer, musician Lucas Niggli, sociologist Rosmarie A. Meier and journalist Patrik Landolt. Patrik Landolt ran the label on a voluntary basis for the first few years.

It takes ten years to record the five piano-drums duo albums by Irène Schweizer with drummers Louis Moholo, Günter Sommer, Andrew Cyrille, Pierre Favre and Han Bennink. “Five albums. Five duos. Five routes,” writes German music critic Bert Noglik. “Irène Schweizer with five different percussionists, each of whom means something special to her in their own way – this is a cosmos of improvisational interactions, a small encyclopedia of percussive-pianistic complementarities, oppositions and entanglements. These dialogues were documented over a period of almost ten years. Unlike Cecil Taylor, who was recorded in duos with outstanding European percussionists as musical snap- shots, there is a story behind each of these duo albums recorded by Irène Schweizer.” Further piano duo recordings with Bennink, Favre, Joey Baron and Hamid Drake follow.

Irène Schweizer, who has become politicized by the experiences of her musician friends from South Africa, participates in anti-colonialist protest in Zürich for a liberated South Africa and against the activities of the major Swiss banks, which are undermining the international boycott of the Apartheid regime of the South Africa. Her concert with Louis Moholo at the Zürich Jazz Festival becomes an anti-Apartheid demonstration. Schweizer – Moholo: Free Mandela (Intakt CD 006). Irène Schweizer regularly plays at demonstrations of the anti-Apartheid movement, such as in front of the headquarters of the Union Bank of Switzerland (now UBS) in 1989.

On behalf of the Swiss National Tourist Office, Intakt Records presses a four- 12 minute single record with the track “Verspielte Zeiten” from the duo album by Irène Schweizer and Günter Sommer (Intakt CD 007) for a supplement to the magazine Schweiz=Suisse=Svizzera=Svizra=Switzerland. The May 1989 issue of the glossy magazine, which promotes an attractive Switzerland in hotels, on the Swiss railways and at summer festivals, focuses on the Swiss jazz scene. Several extensive articles on jazz in Switzerland aim to show that there is more to this country than alphorns, yodelers and operas.