Piano e forte Bram de Looze

• 1 Aigo I 06:58
• 2 Circumvent 03:14
• 3 Meantone Overdye 06:35
• 4 Magnetic Boundaries 05:19
• 5 Hidden Mask 10:20
• 6 Current Space 03:59
• 7 Left in the Unborn 03:38
• 8 Can You Bend Time? 05:54
• 9 Aigo II 06:24
• 10 Levitation 01:48
• Total Runtime 54:09

Info for Piano e forte

Piano e Forte, the new project by the talented jazz pianist Bram De Looze, combines creativity, spontaneity, and passion. Bram reinvents jazz composition and improvisation through the unique decision to play on three different period pianos from the collection of the instrument maker Chris Maene, each of which necessitates a very different stylistic approach.

The young pianist Bram De Looze (25!) is widely considered the biggest talent in Belgian Jazz. He is developing his music alongside the LABtrio (w. Lander Gyselinck & Anneleen Boehme) and as leader of Septych; a 7-piece ensemble including 2 cellists, 3 horns, piano and drums. This international group features Robin Verheyen, Gebhard Ullmann, Bo Van Der Werf, Flin Van Hemmen, Daniel Levin and Lester St-Louis. His first album as a leader with Septych is taken under the wings of the Clean Feed Records Label and will be released In autumn 2015.

Bram De Looze also opens up his musical frontiers in the Dre Hocevar Trio (Coding Of Evidentiality 2015) and Stephanos Chytiris’ Flux (PYR|N 2014), both arise out of an intense period residing in New York.Improvisation is the main fundament in Bram De Looze’s piano playing. He draws his influences out of creative music, historical and contemporary classical music and certainly jazz which plays a major role in his musical development.

With a curious mind Bram De Looze uncovers the value of fortepiano’s, being stunned by an encounter with the piano collection of Chris Maene. The desire to explore new results in a solo piano performance spoke to his imagination; on stage with multiple originals and exact replica’s of piano’s built by excellent piano builders as Anton Walter, Broadwood, Pleyel or Erard. One by one pearls in Maene’s collection.

A wide dynamical range and clear tone by piano’s with parallel strings opens up a path to an approach with a different focus, which is not always possible with a standard, cross-stringed piano. Through this way, the array of new ideas unfolds a soundplatform in which the characters of the piano’s are accentuated.

Bram De Looze uses composition as material to direct the spontaneous musical constructions inspired by the total playing-experience of each piano. This performance embodies a relationship between the imagination of the pianist and the 19th century sounding piano’s. Every instrument contains its own mechanics, materials and structure and generates surprising differences in tone, resonance, timbre, volume, projection. Bram De Looze also pays attention to the repertoire that these piano’s have known and blends it with his own interpretation of playing these instruments. Furthermore the use of different temperaments make the contrasts of the piano’s even wider.

Bram De Looze, piano

Bram De Looze
Belgian pianist and composer Bram De Looze (1991, Knokke-Heist) founds his way to music throughout his teens. In 2007 he starts off with LABtrio together with drummer Lander Gyselinck and bassist Anneleen Boehme. In its early existence, several prizes and awards give LABtrio new opportunities as in 2013 when the prestigious Tremplin Jazz d’Avignon festival pulls off a first album recording ‘Fluxus’. The 2015 album ‘The Howls Are Not What They Seem’ and 2017 album ‘Nature City’ represent their ongoing high level of musical experience.

After studying at the Lemmens Institute and the Artesis Conservatory in Antwerp he moved to New York in 2012, granted a BAEF scholarship to work his way through the New School For Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York with in­ternationally renowned musicians as Uri Caine, Marc Copland, Reggie Workman. Following up this intense period Bram De Looze launches a new international septet in 2014, carrying the name ‘Septych’ and hosting the sound of two cello’s, three horns, drums and piano. This new explora­tion of Bram De Looze’s composing is performed and recorded by very diverse and astounding improvisers: Daniel Levin, Lester St-Louis, Robin Verheyen, Gebhard Ullmann, Bo Van Der Werf and Flin Van Hemmen.

In 2016 Bram De Looze starts to work on the project Piano e Forte in which he reinvents jazz composition and improvisation through the unique decision to play on three pianofortes from the collection of the instrument maker Chris Maene, each of which necessitates a very different stylistic approach. In building his complex musical structures, which mingle jazz and contemporary styles, Bram chooses to mould his playing style to the response, timbre, resonance, harmonics and dynamics of each instrument. Navigating between the warm, rounded sonorities of an original 1838 Erard, the precise and crystalline dynamics of a reproduction eighteenth-century Anton Walter, and the transparent sound of a copy of a 1843 Pleyel Concert Grand, Bram De Looze mixes fragments of nineteenth-century works or idiomatic expressive devices with off‑the‑cuff ideas, achieving a harmonious range of moods while allowing the specific character of each instrument to shine through. Living up to his reputation as a free spirit, Bram De Looze has produced a deeply personal work that is at once innovative and profound. The premiere of this music was presented in an acoustic setting at the Henry Le Boeuf hall, Bozar, Brussels.

Based in Brussels, Bram De Looze is a jack of many trades who travels and performs frequently with Piano e Forte, LABtrio, Robin Verheyen duo, and multiple ensembles alongside Dre Hocevar, Stephanos Chytiris, Stephane Galland, Samuel Ber, Mark Schilders, Antoine Pierre.

Recently he was granted a SABAM Jazz Award for 'Young Talent' at the Gent Jazz Festival.

Booklet for Piano e forte