"Someone who wishes to produce free music with empathy needs to be a good host, an attentive listener and a critical companion, above all however, an enthusiast or, to advocate for a word which threatens to become old-fashioned, but is by no means obsolete, an idealist."

Jazz journalist, editor, author and curator Bert Noglik gave a poignant speech at the presentation of the German Record Critics' Honour Award 2025 to Patrik Landolt in Cologne early this Summer. It's a testament to the legacy that unwavering perseverance can deliver, even in the face of extreme resistance, from someone who witnessed it first hand. Read the full translation by Steph Morris below...

Good evening and welcome everybody!

Many thanks to Intakt Records for this small but perfectly formed festival. Music is at its heart, but music does not disseminate itself. It needs people who support it, who put it on stage, record it in the studio and release it on various media. To honour this hard work, we are awarding a prize tonight.

The Honorary Award from the German Record Critics is the highest accolade from this independent body for which around 150 music experts, critics, writers and journalists work voluntarily. It includes 32 specialist juries for particular genres, from jazz, rock and pop via ethnic music, classical song, chamber music, opera, symphonic and contemporary music right up to electronic and experimental. The prizes include the quarterly Critic’s Choice long lists, the Annual Awards and Honorary Awards. These are awarded to individuals who have made an exceptional contribution in the service of music and are essentially a kind of lifetime achievement award. People who have been distinguished with Honorary Awards in recent years include Herbert Blomstedt, Wolfgang Riehm, Manfred Eicher, Peter Brötzmann and Itzak Perlman. The prize is immensely prestigious because it is awarded by experts in the field and because it is independent – independent of the music industry, independent of political influence, and independent from pressure groups. In this sense, the association has much in common with the label we are here to celebrate today: Intakt Records.

Intakt Records is not a corporate empire with an executive office and an armada of employees. For many years Patrik Landolt steered the label from his apartment in Zurich’s Neptunstraße. Even today he invites musicians there after concerts or studio recordings in numbers which would trigger panic in a fire protection officer. Patrik’s hospitality is legendary, and thanks to his deep knowledge and love of Greece, his handmade domadakia are by all accounts the best north of Athens. Someone who wishes to produce free music with empathy needs to be a good host, an attentive listener and a critical companion, above all however, an enthusiast or, to advocate for a word which threatens to become old-fashioned, but is by no means obsolete, an idealist. And with that I come to the actual laudation.

Independent creative work starts from a place where there is no contractual obligation, instead an inner need, the drive to do something where you are convinced of the urgency and currency, irrespective of whether it will be worth it in the economic sense, whether it will pay off. This was Patrik Landolt’s motivation when, in 1986, with adventurous recklessness, enormous dedication and also almost by accident, he founded a record label which went on to become one of the most high-profile in the field of contemporary-aligned jazz, a label which not only reproduced this music but enabled people to experience it, supported and promoted it in an exemplary manner.

To place all that in its historical context, we have to flash back briefly. The early eighties was a time in Switzerland when a new alternative culture was starting to break through in full force. Questioning the establishment, new forms of art and protest were tested out, in which the aesthetic was closely associated with the political. During this period, Patrik Landolt, who had organised his first jazz concert as a schoolboy, and had recently studied philosophy, began his career as a journalist. In 1980 he was one of the cofounders of the WochenZeitung (‘weekly journal’) or WoZ, which both covered and shaped these developments, to which he was remain loyal for 24 years as arts correspondent. Even then he joined forces with kindred spirits to give a platform to the new, innovative jazz, running Fabrikjazz and then from 1984 the Taktlos Festival.

Even if the history is familiar, let’s retrace it once more. There were radio recordings from the first Taktlos Festival, in 1984, of the performances by Irène Schweizer – brilliant audio documents, but no one wanted to release them. And so Patrik Landolt decided to release them himself. The record numbered Intakt 001 was surprisingly well received and today is what’s known as a collector’s item, not solely because the cover was printed back to front, thanks to the inexperience of those involved. The history of Intakt Records’ founding exemplifies the cultural and political climate it owes its existence to. And it reminds us as the same time that Irène Schweizer became a kind of patron saint to Intakt, a close ally and an influential musician – not necessarily in a stylistic sense but above all in a moral sense, with her resolute lifestyle, her uncompromising attitude, her insistence on artistic quality and her political integrity.

Right from the start Intakt showed a dedication to feminism and a heightened awareness of the role of women in improvised music. Right from the start there was solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and its exponents in exile, bridge-building towards the improvised music-makers behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, and opposition to everything reactionary and conservative. Together with his comrades – and here his partner Rosmarie A. Meier should be named first and foremost – Patrik Landolt succeeded in giving the label a unique profile and soon an international image – in other words paying attention to its own scene, in Switzerland, while also looking around the world. Contrary to the notion that Europe should develop its own jazz, Patrik always followed transatlantic developments as well, with an enormous respect for the Afro-American tradition and its creative legacies. Viewing European culture as autonomous would have been just as short sighted as the adoption of national styles. Jazz needed to be open to the world.

Alone the name of the label’s artist number one represents this conviction: Irène Schweizer. Intakt followed her work throughout the decades and re-released her earlier recordings too. Irène Schweizer, Joëlle Léandre and Maggie Nicols, Pierre Favre, Barry Guy and the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Cecil Taylor, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Aki Takase, Elliott Sharp, Ulrich Gumpert and Günter Baby Sommer: the foundation of Intakt was built on big names. And it gave outstanding Swiss musicians from succeeding generations a platform: Sylvie Courvoisier, Co Streiff, Lucas Niggli, Omri Ziegele, even a brilliant outlier such as the accordion player Hans Hassler. Added to them came and still come others, from every direction: Ingrid Laubrock, Angelika Niescier, Mary Halverson, Alexander Hawkins, Christian Lillinger, Kaja Draksler, Petter Eldh, Anna Webber, James Brandon Lewis…  and it goes on, above all with the younger generation of course. It’s impossible to pick a representative selection here, or even to name only the most important. No more name dropping. Intakt stands not least for musical plurality and stylistic diversity. The sum of the names is the idea; the catalogue speaks for itself.

Intakt Records has established an identity characterised by its openness, while never slipping into randomness. That has to do with personal preferences but it is way more than just reflection of individual taste. A keen-eyed observer of the scene, first as a music journalist then later as a record producer, back in 1993 Patrik Landolt wrote in the foreword to the book he edited, Die Lachenden Außenseiter (‘the laughing outlier’): “A precise perception of reality is a crucial to music which rides the wave of its time. Such music in turn allows us to deduce things about reality, reflects the mood, diagnoses the time, holds a mirror up –music as product of and insight into reality – and does this through play, through experiment, through the construction and destruction of forms, through joyful creativity.”

To Patrik Landolt, reflecting with the intellect and perceiving with the senses were both always important and inseparable. At the same time an affinity with the musicians is essential; as he himself has said, for the label they are both ambassadors and door openers. For that reason Patrik Landolt has always been constantly out and about, seeking inspiration at concerts, festivals, in conversations, on travels and in encounters with other art forms. He sees his role as that of a publisher, cultivating record production like a good press would its collaboration with authors. To that end he sets great store by long-term collaborations, joint development of projects, the creative genesis of ‘new music’ – literally new. As a publisher, Intakt Records provides orientation by forming a selection from the often overwhelming torrent of material. Selection means qualifying, means making the relevant visible – or audible. The musicians thus experience a view of themselves, from ‘outside’ as it were. In the form of criticism that can be very helpful as a corrective. More important still is the role of stimulation, inspiration and companionship in the search for new expressions, new ideas and new music-making constellations. Production is thus much more than simply reproduction. It directs and supports with care, develops dramaturgies, boosts excellence and clarity.

The consideration shown by the label includes supporting musicians, care in editing its products, physical production, the look, promotion and PR support. In terms of the graphic design for the CDs, sometimes entrusted to highly acclaimed artists such as Max Bill or Gottfried Honegger, with continuity ensured by the ‘house designer’ Jonas Schoder, Intakt Records has established an unmistakable face. Another example is the liner notes accompanying every release in the form of consistently meaningful, often very literary essays: the word not as advertising but as guide and artistic accompaniment.

A music publisher today who does nothing more than fling records out onto the market is working in ignorance of reality. Intakt Records has always seen its documentation and dissemination work in the context of the living evolution of music. Close collaborations with live presentations were part of the programme from the start, beginning with Fabrikjazz, then with the Taktlos Festival and since 2002 also the unerhört! Festival, always with the aim of developing new formats and organisational forms and spreading the word externally. Intakt has appeared with concert series for instance at Moods in Zürich, at Porgy & Bess in Vienna, at John Zorn’s The Stone in New York and at the Vortex Jazz Club in London.

To the image of the label head as publisher can and must be added another, that of patron. For many years Patrik Landolt ran Intakt Records on a voluntary basis. Only after he parted ways from the WoZ did running a label become a source of income. ‘As patrons,’ he says, ‘it’s not our wealth we bring but our knowledge and experience.’ What was invested here, and cannot be quantified in money, is dedication. So it makes sense that since 1986 Intakt Records has been run not as a private firm but in the legal form of a non-profit association. Intakt was set up from the start as a syndicate, a co-operative.

Some may have wondered what Patrik Landolt has done, after thirty-six years successful work, by handing Intakt Records over to an enthusiastic team of younger people: Florian Keller, Anja Illmaier, Fiona Ryan, Ariane Pollo and Elia Aregger. The answer is important, because it is rooted in the organisation’s philosophy; this isn’t only about rejuvenation, but above all about the continued vitality and future vision of the label, which its founder will still be tied to as an advisor. It is important to note that the handover of responsibility took place during a phase in which Intakt was on a firmer footing than ever in its history. In answer to a journalist who asked, wasn’t he really indispensable, Patrik Landolt replied pointedly, ‘If I was indispensable, our project would have failed.’ To return to the earlier point, it has certainly proved worth it, worth it in the shape of a life which could hardly have been richer in encounters and experiences.

‘Music,’ Patrik Landolt says, ‘condenses experiences and feelings. Our record and CD shelves reflect our biography and they are a chronicle of the time, way beyond ourselves, written with emotion, with rage, joy and empathy.’ Intakt Records has written powerfully in this chronicle. The circa 450 productions are a mighty reference library on the creative development of the pan-genre evolution of new jazz and improvised music over the last four decades.

‘But art,’ to quote Patrik Landolt one last time, ‘doesn’t only represent today’s world, it creates new worlds during the creative process. As a new production, each CD is a newly created world – whether it encapsulates the dominant world or transcends it as an experience, or anticipates utopias with sounds, notes and innovative approaches.’

Intakt Records would not exist and would be unimaginable without the passion of the publisher we are celebrating today. Patrik Landolt, congratulations on the German Record Critics’ Honorary Award!

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Loft Köln, 28 May 2025

Translation: Steph Morris