Irène Schweizer: jazz pianist, activist, icon. Leftist, lesbian, autonomous. A self-taught musician from Schaffhausen, she won the Zurich Amateur Jazz Festival in 1960 at the age of 19. A woman was not expected – the first prize was a men's shirt. The path of the young woman from the northern Swiss province leads her deeper into experimental music: from London's jazz club Ronnie Scott's and the Zurich Africana Club to avant-garde stages in Wuppertal, Berlin, Willisau, Chicago, and New York, and from concerts with Don Cherry, Louis Moholo, and George Lewis to solo performances as a leading pianist of European jazz in Switzerland's temples of high culture, the Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre and the Zurich Tonhalle. Time and again, she fights for artistic freedom and autonomy. Her unwavering stance against apartheid and for women's rights leads to the Fichen scandal.