Stephanos Chytiris (drums/percussion) with Bram De Looze (piano)
2nd set w/ George Malefakis (viola)
Wednesday, January 16th, at Polychoros KET. Be there!
Stephanos Chytiris
Stefanos Chytiris is a drummer who grew up and studied in Athens, completing his musical studies in Unites States. He participates in New York improvisational scenes while developing his personal work with Bram De Looze, Luca Rosenfeld, Daniel Carter, Dre Hocevar, Ingrid Laubrock, Todd Neufeld, Pascal Niggenkemper, Billy Mintz and Tony Malaby. Flux Project – Pyr | n was his first album recorded in 2014 produced by drummer Michael Carvin. In March 2017, the album Egata, with seven musicians, was released based on the original sound of improvisation.
Bram De Looze
The young pianist Bram De Looze (27) 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.
PREMIERE AT BOZAR, BRUSSELS – HENRI LE BOEUFZAAL
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.
After paying a visit to the historical collection of pianofortes of Chris Maene, he starts his first solo project Piano é Forte. Playing on three pianos, Bram reinvents jazz composition and improvisation. In 2016 he received an SABAM Jazz Award for young talent at the Gent Jazz Festival.
PIANO E FORTE, LABEL OUTHERE MUSIC 2016
As a sequel to Piano é Forte, Bram De Looze comes with a brand new solo project. Chris Maene chose De Looze as jazz ambassador to make use of the revolutionary, straight strung Chris Maene Concert Grand Piano.
At the Classical Music Awards (the Klara’s) Bram De Looze won the award for Most Promising Young Artist of the year 2018.
In 2018, Bram launched a new project, which is a perfect sequel to his Piano é Forte. In this project, De Looze plays on a brand new unique Chris Maene Concert Grand Piano. This grandpiano doesn’t just possess the strength of a modern piano, but also the warmth of its historical predecessors.
Chris Maene specifically chose De Looze as an ambassador of this new instrument for the Jazz. This revolutionary piano was especially made upon request of Maestro Daniel Barenboim. In this design the piano has parallel chords instead of diagonal ones.
This results into a transparent, clear and superior sound, where you can clearly distinguish different tone registers from each other.
It was not just commercial and contemporary music, but ancient classic piano literature as well that inspired De Looze to be extra creative. This varies from Bach, Stravinsky to Ornette Coleman, Monk to Jason Moran and Steve Lehman.
• New Album September 2018 (Outhere Music – Outnote)
George Malefakis
George Malefakis was born in Athens in 1976. He studied Violin and Higher Theory and in 2011 he received the Composition Diploma from the class of G. Minas. He attended many seminars (orchestration, analysis, musicological etc) and synthesis workshops with Greek and foreign teachers. In addition to teaching and composition activity, he is actively involved in vocal / choral music, as a member or founder of professional and amateur ensembles, as well as with free improvisation, with various shapes and projects, and is one of the main organizers of Impro Fest, organized in recent years in Athens. He is a member of the Independent Association of Music Development (ASMA). Recently his first album was released in the album At Tonal. He also co-authored the music of Christos Kapatos’s “The Voice of Antonis” (2018).