Skyjack
is a collaboration between musicians from Switzerland and South Africa. The collaboration has its origins in the Bern Jazz Workshop, where Kyle Shepherd, Shane Cooper and drummer Kesivan Naidoo met Marc Stucki and Andreas Tschopp on winding paths and in various formations. The encounter sparked sparks on a musical and personal level and resulted in a quintet tour through South Africa and Swaziland in June 2013. Although the formation as such had never played before the tour, it became clear from the first rehearsal: no project feels like that, Skyjack is a band. Five musicians of the same spirit, five highly energetic improvisers, had found each other here. In 2015 the band won the prestigious “Transnational” prize in Switzerland. The production of their first album “Skyjack” followed in 2016 with an extensive, mostly sold-out 3-week release tour through South Africa in September. In April 2017 the band was one of the headliners at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival.

In spring 2018, the band was able to play another extensive tour through Switzerland and Germany with a well-received concert at the Taktlos Festival in Zurich. A pre-release tour followed in autumn 2018 with her album “The Hunter”, which was released in April 2019 by Enja/Yellowbrid Records, through South Africa, followed by a release tour through Germany and Switzerland in 2019.

Kesivan Naidoo decided to leave the band in 2020 at the same time as the corona pandemic. A tour of South Africa followed in 2022, followed by a recording session with new drummer Jonno Sweetman.