Anita Schwabe is a jazz pianist and composer currently tutoring at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria, Wellington. She has studied both here in New Zealand and at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Netherlands, Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and Berklee College of Music in the USA. She has performed at all the major festivals in NZ with her own groups and is currently a member of the Rodger Fox Big Band which has toured both NZ and USA.

Composing is a big part of her jazz performance and she has received several awards and commissions. In 2020 she was a recipient of the Wellington Jazz Festival Commission and wrote a suite of music “A Snapshot of Wellington” with photography of Wellington by Saskia van Dijk accompanying the suite.

In 2018 she won the APRA award for best jazz composition “Spring Tide” that was released on her CD “Eat Your Greens” featuring Ron Samsom, Cameron McArthur and Roger Manins. She was also a finalist in the 2021 APRA jazz awards with “August Augmentation”. One of her big band compositions features on the album "Rodger Fox big band plays Hone Tuwhare" and she was commissioned to write a big band composition for the Royal New Zealand Airforce big band album "Kaiwhakatere".

Anita will be playing a selection of her original composition with a quartet featuring Callum Allardice on guitar, Lance Philip on drums and Rory Macartney on bass.