Welcome to
Gate 21 & Terminus 7

About Gate 21 & Terminus 7

We're two Geneva based "sister" rock bands. Gate 21 is a cover band while Terminus 7 is original material oriented. 

Gate 21 is an evolution since its founding in early 90's by Marc Fettarappa and Alex Smouha (originally called "The Darts").

Across the years, many friends and renowned local musicians have been part of the band like Alvin Williams, Florian Sonnemann, Dennis Watson, Carlos Sprenger, Laurence Quiquerez, Bruno Chatelain, Alain Gaberell, Jean-Pierre Dorner, Darko Milojkovic, Jaco Dwek, ("RockAddiXion" area), Rafael Ruiz to name a few... A special mention goes to Sabine Piantella ("RockAddiXion" area) who has saved Gate 21 with panache on extremely short notice for a gig during the pandemic!

During the Darts and RockAddixion periods, the band performed at the famous CERN Hardronic festival but also at Gena Festival and supported the UK British Blues Award winner and 4 time European Blues Awards nominee Bex Marshall on her debut album "Bootleg" swiss tour.

The band was renamed "Gate 21" after our bass player Andy Simha who spends a lot of time at airport gates ! Felix Weber and Thierry Paley respectively took on the drumming and the singing. To no small measure of Andy's making, Francesca Molteni filled in after Thierry  took on other activities. 

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Gate 21 repertoire covers assorted bands like Toto, The Beatles, Phil Collins, Chris Cornell and many others.

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Terminus 7 was originally founded by Claude Lander and Patrick Dupont back in the 70's with Bernard Grobet, Christian Juge and Christian Guggenbuhl.

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Terminus 7 was named after the end-of-the-line bust stop

the teenagers had to jump out at to get at Claude's where 

rehearsals took place

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After a 40 years break in 2013, the band was reformed by Claude and Pat for a special gig but the appetite for music just kept growing. So, with new additions in the names of Patou Uhlmann (famous for his long standing ways in "Le Beau Lac de Bâle"), Frank Dupont (currently in the Jazz and Rap "WolfGang" Band) and Lucas Dupont on drums, musical endeavours continued. 

Since then members have come and gone like Anders Dahlqvist, Jean-Philippe de Toledo.

In the later years, Marc Fettarappa (who spent long hours soldering connectors in Claude's studio back in 1990) and Pierre-André Loizeau joined the drumerless band shortly before Terminus 7 was asked to play at the Geneva Botanical Gardens 200th anniversary. During that show, Thierry Paley, an old friend, suggested that we desperately needed a drummer: that was done and he joined the next day.

Later as he went on to pursue other endeavours, we shortly regrouped both bands under the "GaTe 217" banner thus having Felix Weber on drums. We have since reverted to 2 separate but brotherly bands as we often gig together and somewhat mixed up our stuff (The Man from Minsk was a Darts original by Alex and Marc and is now part of the Terminus 7 repertoire, Andy sings on Marcs latest compositions Moon Wings, Get Off my Face and Our Destiny which are also in Terminus 7 repertoire)

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Terminus 7 repertoire is original material composed by the band members across the years and nonetheless includes 2 extensively revisited covers to date.

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Thanks to Clare Ellison and Colette Marx-Nielsen for their contributions on backing vocals

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Please do not hesitate to contact us for shows and events. Check us out on the video page!