Florian Stoffner is a Swiss, Zürich-based guitarist who has developed a deeply personal approach to free improvisation. He usually works in intimate settings of duos or trios, and has recorded with innovative European improvisers like Paul Lovens, Rudi Mahall, Albert Cirera, John Butcher, Marta Warelis, and Vasco Trilla, but also performed with jazz musicians like Joe Lovano, Kidd Jordan, and Nils Petter Molvær.
bijou is Stoffner’s third solo album, following …And Sorry and Norman (Veto, 2012 and 2014), recorded by Stoffner at Bee Street Studio in New York, and mixed and mastered by John Butcher. Paul Lovens is credited with “first aid”. The cover painting is by American, Zürich-based visual artist David Chieppo.
The album offers six “bijou” improvisations. The album expands Stoffner’s exploratory, spontaneous drive explored in his recent trio recordings with Butcher and drummer Chris Corsano – Braids (ezz-thetics, 2023) and The Glass Changes Shape (Relative Pitch, 2024). Stoffner demonstrates his subtle command of texture and space, with inventive exploration of the electric guitar timbres and vocabulary, often sounding like an exotic, reverberant, distorted, and feedback-charged string instrument, with great focus on detail but without drama.
bijou captures Stoffner’s stream-of-thought beautifully. He acts like a sound painter or sonic explorer who struggles with a spacious canvas, or a tangible, physical space, in a similar way to Chieppo’s cover painting. Only at the end of each piece may you fully appreciate the depth and the imaginative architecture of his bold, economic sonic strokes.
Florian Stoffner – bijou (Relative Pitch, 2026)
