The Storming of the Winter Palace (album)

On the album, Schweizer is joined by vocalist Maggie Nicols, trombonist George Lewis, bassist Joëlle Léandre, and drummer Günter Sommer.

[1][2][3] The authors of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings awarded the album 4 stars, stating that it "documents a group with formidable powers," and commenting: "Schweizer is very much the key element, assembling and unpicking a series of small-scale themes and ideas like some intellectual tricoteuse.

Maggie Nicols's ability to break down narrative song into its constituent elements, semantic nonsense, and still leave you feeling that you've heard a story and been serenaded as well continues to amaze, as does George Lewis's ability to make even a disassembled trombone sound like the most musical thing on the planet... Sommer is not so much a minimalist as a miniaturist, able to invest tiny ideas with enormous significance... Léandre rumbles away in the background... this represents a wonderful documentation of an important group.

"[4] Writing for All About Jazz Glenn Astarita remarked: "The Storming Of The Winter Palace is a showstopper as this writer often thought of the visual aspects; hence, a video of this performance would have been an added treat as the music and overall intensity alludes to one heck of a live performance!

"[5] In an article for Morning Star Online, Chris Searle noted that the album featured "three women - a Swiss pianist, a Scottish singer and a French bassist - and two men, a German drummer and an African American trombonist born in Chicago," and wrote: "Audacity here certainly, and brilliant jazz musicianship too - mostly in a free ensemble setting, stirred up into a relentless excitation by the five revolutionary improvising spirits.