Susanne Abbuehl
Susanne Abbuehl (born July 30, 1970, in Bern, Switzerland) is a Swiss-Dutch jazz singer and composer. She grew up loving both jazz and classical music because her parents were music fans. As a child she learned harpsichord and later started piano at 17 when she moved to Los Angeles. In high school she was part of a touring ensemble in the United States and Canada.
She studied at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague with Jeanne Lee and Rachel Gould, earning a master’s degree in performance and pedagogy. She also studied Indian classical music in Mumbai with Prabha Atre and studied composition with Diderik Wagenaar.
Early in her career she worked with pianist Wolfert Brederode, drummer Samuel Rohrer, and clarinetist Christof May; later she collaborated with flugelhornist Matthieu Michel and percussionist Olavi Louhivuori. Her influences include Cassandra Wilson, Shirley Horn, and Helen Merrill.
Her 2001 ECM album April features songs set to poems by E. E. Cummings and won an Edison Award. For the album The Gift she set to music the words of Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, and Wallace Stevens. She tours across Europe, North America, and Africa, performing in places like Montreal, Maputo, Cape Town, Rome, Paris, Zurich, and Oslo.
In 2006 ECM released Compass, with Matthieu Portal. In 2013 her radio play Der Gaukler Tag was nominated for the Prix Marulic. Her work often blends classical elements with jazz in a quiet, intimate style sometimes called chamber jazz.
Abbuehl teaches jazz voice and ensembles at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and at HEMU Lausanne. She led the jazz department at the Royal Conservatory from 2020 to 2022 and later became head of the jazz department at Hochschule für Musik Basel. She also gives masterclasses across Europe.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:13 (CET).