Born in Switzerland, Patrick Moraz began studies in violin and piano as a young child. His serious commitment to piano really began when he had the opportunity (because they were living in the same house in Vevey, Switzerland) to intently watch and listen to Clara Haskil the great Romanian concert pianist who was one of the world’s leading authorities on the music of Mozart, Shubert, Bach and Beethoven. Later, while attending the Conservatory of Lausanne he studied Harmony and Counterpoint, (the Art of the Fugue), with Nadia Boulanger.

At the age of sixteen, Patrick gained attention as the youngest person to ever win the prestigious “Best Soloist Award” at the Zurich Jazz Festival. Two years later he was opening concerts in Europe for “Jazz Great”, John Coltrane.

During the early sixties Patrick's work assignments and musical performances had him traveling extensively throughout Switzerland and Europe and in the mid sixties he added India, Africa and the Middle East to his journeys.

In 1968 Patrick decided to become a full time professional musician. While advancing his studies with such notables as Pierre Boulez, Stockhausen and Xenakis, as part of Geneva's Studio de Musique Contemporaine, he began to do film scores. He scored and recorded the music for “La Salamandre” and “Le milieu du Monde”, by Director Alain Tanner.

During this time he also went on to form, along with good friend (bassist) Jean Ristori, the revolutionary rock group “MAINHORSE”. The band recorded their first and only album “Mainhorse” on Polydor Records and they toured throughout Western Europe, and England.

When the group disbanded at the beginning of 1972 Moraz and Ristori toured Japan and the Far East with a Brazillian Ballet Company for the better part of that year. Upon their return to Switzerland, Patrick scored, with the help of his friend and mentor, world famous organist Guy Bovet, the soundtrack for the movie “L' Invitation”, by Director Claude Goretta, which won the prestigious “Grand Prix du Jury” (the most coveted award aside from the “Palme d' Or”) at the 1973 Cannes Festival.

Directly after that Patrick scored another movie for the same director Claude Goretta, “Pas si méchant que ça” starring Gérard Depardieu and Marlène Jobert. Other movie scores followed during the next twenty years.

Patrick moved to London in the spring of 1973 and formed the Rock Trio “REFUGEE” with two English musicians he had met a few years earlier, Lee Jackson and Brian Davison, both former members of “The Nice”. Rising to international fame in 1973-1974, “Refugee” split up after their first and only successful tour of England and Europe and their critically acclaimed LP of the same name.

In August of 1974 Patrick Moraz was invited to become the keyboardist and member of one of the biggest rock bands in the world: “YES”.

Patrick proved to be quite at home in this most complex period in
YES'S evolution and in fact after only a few weeks of recording and rehearsing, provided what many fans consider to be the band's pinnacle of artistic creativity : the album “Relayer”.

During the “Relayer Tour”, the group performed virtually non-stop, worldwide, for the next three years. In 1976 during America's bi-centennial year of celebrations many of YES’s audiences numbered in the tens of thousands, with an audience exceeding 105,000 at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

During breaks from band work, all of the members of YES recorded their own solo albums. Patrick's first solo effort was the visionary “i” (a.k.a.
“The Story of i” ) which was released in 1976 by Atlantic Records and was voted “Best Keyboard Album” of the year, by Keyboard Magazine. Patrick was also named “Best New Talent” that same year. The very accomplished musicians Patrick chose to work and play with on his album were Jeff Berlin, (bass), Alphonse Mouzon (drums), Ray Gomez (guitar), Andy Newmark (drums) as well as sixteen Brazilian percussionists. In addition to all the instrumental music and French lyrics Patrick composed and performed for the album, he chose, as lead singer for the project, the English singer and lyricist John McBurnie, who co-wrote the 5 English songs with Moraz.

In the spring of 1977 after the recording of “Out in the Sun” Patrick moved to Brazil and learned the native musical languages and idioms of this most exotic land. During previous visits to the country Patrick had built a unique band of sixteen percussionists. For over two years, the group recorded at numerous recording studios and performed at festivals and concerts, mainly throughout the Latin American Nations.

Moraz was engaged by the Moody Blues in 1978 to take part in a promotional World Tour for their comeback album “Octave”. Patrick was made a full time member of the Moody Blues in 1980, during the recording of “Long Distance Voyager” which, in 1981 went on to become #1 in “Billboard”, “Cashbox” and across the board in US and Canadian charts, reaching worldwide sales of over 11 million albums. Four more studios albums, all big hits, “The Present”, “The Other Side of Life”, “Sur la Mer” and “Keys of the Kingdom”, and numerous North-American and Worldwide tours followed, to which Patrick Moraz contributed to as a fully-fledged member of the band during the next ten years.

In addition to circling the globe and performing with the Moodies, Patrick was giving concerts with his own band from Brazil. Invited by Claude Nobs, the founder of the world-famous Montreux Jazz Festival, to play at the Montreux and Sao Paolo Jazz Festivals, he met jazz greats George Duke, Stan Getz and Chick Corea, with whom he worked with on two albums, along with French bass virtuoso Bunny Brunel, having first introduced the latter to Chick himself, back in the UK.

Patrick also continued to record his solo albums during this period including the revolutionary “Future Memories 1 , Live on TV” in 1979 and “Future Memories ll” in 1982 which was chosen to represent Switzerland at the Montreux Golden Rose Television Festival. They were both spontaneously composed , “live in real-time”, and broadcast on television throughout Europe.

Late in 1979, Moraz recorded a series of original works based on musical idioms, with the pan pipe virtuoso Simon “Syrinx” Stanciu resulting with the album “Co-Existence” - re-released as “Libertate”- for charity purposes in favor of the children of Romania, after the Revolution of that country in 1989.

This marriage of musical styles symbolically “erased” cultural boundaries, blending the ancient, melodic tones of the pan pipe wooden flute with the “sonic ventures” and melodies of present-day synthesizers, electronic keyboards, acoustic piano, ethnic percussions and rock instruments.

After this extraordinary, once again “ahead of its time” venture, Patrick continued to work as a member of “The Moody Blues” and also to record and perform as a solo artist, collaborating with fellow YES alumnus Bill Bruford, on two highly acclaimed albums, “Music for Piano and Drums” and “Flags”. He also recorded with keyboardist Chick Corea, bass virtuoso Bunny Brunel and guitarist Kazumi Watanabe.

Towards the end of the eighties, when not touring or recording with the Moodies as part of his first and foremost priority and having acquired his own recording facility, “Time-Code Studios”, in Los Angeles, California, Moraz spent and dedicated the next two years mainly composing and developing a vast project in honor of the 700th Anniversary of his native country, Switzerland. The project was called : “The Symphony of the 700th under the global title of “StarPeace”.

Patrick spent literally a small fortune and an immense amount of energy conceptualizing the “out-of-this world” project which, for various reasons totally independent of Patrick’s own will, had to be abandoned and re-considered for the time being. It has however continued to be a creative endeavour of the highest caliber and will certainly see the “light-of-day” in a not-too-distant future!

He left “The Moody Blues” in 1991.

In 1993, after two years of intense trials and tribulations and in order to pursue a career as a solo artist, Patrick Moraz decided to record, for the first time in his career, music exclusively composed for and performed on acoustic piano.

In 1994, he released his ninth solo album, his piano solo debut : “Windows of Time”. Robert Doerschuk of Keyboard Magazine hailed it as a monumental work saying:

“If Beethoven had gigged with YES, he might have wound up sounding like this”!

Patrick's 1995 “Coming Home America Tour”, better known as “CHAT”, may well be one of the most unique and courageous undertakings yet, in an illustrious career marked by innovation. In his determination to bring artist and audience closer together, in order to truly share the emotional intensity that is the creative acoustic experience, Patrick took it upon himself to go directly to his public by offering public and private solo concert bookings via the Internet. The response was immediate and enthusiastic leading to an equally successful “CHAT ll” Tour.

In 2001 Patrick was commissioned to write an hour of music for a large symphony orchestra in France. It took him nine months and the work was performed and broadcast live on French speaking television channels all over the world at the end of that year.

Apart from composing extensively at the Audio Playground Synthesizer Museum and Studios in Orlando, FL, since 1998, Patrick also released two new works for piano: “Resonance”, released in 2000, and “ESP” (Etudes-Sonatas-Preludes) released in September of 2003.

Since then, Patrick Moraz has continued to compose, record, conceptualize and develop various musical and artistic projects.

In and around 2005, Patrick met Rob Ayling, the brilliant and entrepreneurial music aficionado from England who took it upon himself to have a very important roster of artists works released and re-released worldwide through his own distribution company “Voice Print Records / Floating World”.

These artists, including Patrick Moraz, came from the very fabric which made the musical History of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and of the 21st Century so vibrant and interesting. Aided by a very efficient team, Rob Ayling found the way to have all these “gems” reprised and manufactured in the best way possible, thus prolongating the lives, not only of the products, but of the artists themselves.

In 2009 Patrick released his latest CD to date, “Change of Space” which is a collection of new songs and instrumental pieces. Some of the great musicians who are featured on this album are: Bunny Brunel (bass), John Wackerman (drums), Kazumi Watanabe (guitarist), Alex Acuna (Perc.) Alex Ligertwood (lead vocals), Don Adey (lead vocals), Janis Liebhart (backing vocals), Ronnie Ciago (drums), Michael Tovar (rthm. Guitar)

In 2011, in the final post-production stages, are three entirely new CDs :

1.- The brand new “World Wide Human Interface Live from Abbey Road
with Patrick Moraz”©, which was completley performed and recorded live, entirely on his own in 1987, at Abbey Road Studio #2, in London, a studio made famous by The Beatles.

2.- A “live-in-concert” double CD recording of Moraz-Bruford in Maryland, “Music for Piano & Drums”©

3.- A classical solo piano CD, composed by Patrick Moraz of some new pieces for “enhanced” piano and some creative excerpts for acoustic piano entitled “PianissiMoraz”©

In recent years he has also remastered and released twenty CD's and two DVD's (see Discography)

Currently, in addition to doing live concerts again, Patrick is also working on the preparation of a Cantata for SATB Choir which is an homage to our planet entitled “EcoCantata”© .

Parallelly, Patrick Moraz says that he is progressing in the compositional development, production and “finition” of a “Futuristic Ballet” and other works featuring electronic arrangements as well as innovative, rhythmic instrumentation and acoustic orchestrations.

Last but not least, his up-and-coming new studio CD, due in 2012,

“A w a y t o F r e e d o m”©