Nolosé Salsa 16-piece Cuban salsa orchestra from Switzerland, live since 2004

We bring our own backline: keyboard, drum kit, timbales, congas, bongos and Latin percussion. The venue provides the PA, a mixing console with 16 to 24 inputs depending on the line-up, microphones, DI boxes for keyboard and bass, mic stands, 6 to 8 monitor mixes and mains power on stage. Stage space is about 2.5 square metres per musician, with a riser for drums and percussion if possible. Full stage plans and patch lists for 8, 10, 12 and 16 musicians are available on request.

Indoor or outdoor, stage size, whether the venue has its own PA and lighting with a sound engineer, power on stage, load-in access and parking for three cars, the number of guests, the time we can set up and the time you want the music to start.

Yes. If the venue has no system, we bring our own PA with our sound engineer and stage lighting for line-ups up to 12 musicians. We prefer to use the house system when there is one, following our technical rider.

Yes. We play a curated Latin playlist through our PA before the show and during the break, so the dance floor never goes quiet. For a full DJ set we can recommend salsa DJs we regularly share the stage with.

The Havana Jazz Festival in 2013: a Swiss salsa orchestra playing for a Cuban audience, in the city where the music was born. We went back the next year to record our album at the Radio Progreso studios, and it won the Premio Internacional at Cubadisco 2014. The venue we keep coming back to is the Montreux Jazz Festival, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

An open-air summer evening with a crowd that dances: a festival stage, a city square, a lakeside party. Weddings come a close second, because by the third song everyone is on the floor, from the grandparents to the kids.

Nolosé was born in 2004 in the Latin jazz workshop of the Lausanne jazz school, the EJMA. Our founder, who still plays the congas, kept the band together after the course ended. Twenty-two years and more than five hundred concerts later, the orchestra counts sixteen musicians from Cuba, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Poland and Switzerland, five records and festival stages in Switzerland, Cuba, Colombia, Greece and France.

Our sound comes from Cuban timba and son: Los Van Van, Havana D'Primera, Pupy y Los Que Son Son, Isaac Delgado, with a strong dose of Latin jazz. Favourite artist: Juan Formell and Los Van Van, the band that reinvented Cuban dance music for forty years. Greatest song of all time: hard to pick, but "Moliendo Café" has never failed to fill a dance floor.

We arrive two hours before the show for set-up and line check. We play 90 minutes to two hours of music, in one set or two sets of 60 minutes with a break, usually between 9 pm and midnight. Other timings are possible for daytime events.

Yes, most of our summer concerts are outdoors. We ask for a covered stage to protect the instruments and the electronics, and an indoor fallback in case of bad weather.

Both. We build the set from our own compositions and Cuban classics, and we shape it to your event: a first dance, a favourite song, a slower start during dinner and a faster second set when the floor fills. Tell us what matters to you and we work it in.

Five stars on Google. The words that come back: the energy of sixteen musicians on stage, a dance floor that fills by the third song, musicians who are easy to work with, and a sound that is clean and never too loud for the room.

Eight musicians fill a room of up to about 150 guests and fit on a small stage. Ten to twelve suit corporate events and city festivals. The full sixteen-piece orchestra is for festival main stages and big celebrations. Tell us the room and the number of guests and we recommend the line-up.