In Belgium: Belgian jazz will be making a lot of mellifluous at the end of May.
The current crisis hits our jazz musicians really hard. Public concerts are not possible at the moment and there is hardly any perspective. A whole sector is suffering, while the musicians miss their audience and the audience misses the musicians. So, let’s help each other out!
The Belgian jazz world is dynamic, flexible and supportive. Belgian Jazz Fest is proof of that. With this online festival, the promoters of 11 established festivals present an extraordinary cross-section of the Belgian scene on May 29 & 30. The 24 (!) concerts will be broadcast from Flagey, one of Belgium’s finest jazz venues.
Live concerts are of course still the real deal, but Belgian jazz lives and needs you. Support now and buy your ticket or donate an amount of your choice!
Bel Jazz Fest’s ambition is no less: a stream of no less than 25 concerts, in high audio and image quality, from the Flagey building with its excellent acoustics. You can change stages online and exchange ideas with other viewers via chat. Moreover, you do not have to miss a note of concerts that partly run simultaneously: with your ticket, the content remains available for up to a week after the festival!
Who’s playing? Here are just some of the highlights:
An Pierlé Quartet: The An Pierlé Quartet unites the refreshing young jazz duo SCHNTZL with singer-songwriter An Pierlé and producer/multi-instrumentalist Koen Gisen.
Bert Cools: Guitar player Bert Cools is mainly active in the fields of improvised and electronic music. You may know him from the unique granvat platform, which he founded with his brother Stijn in 2011.
Hermia – Mohy – Gerstmans plays the love songs: With his trio, Manuel Hermia creates a jazz world that is both rooted in tradition and open to all influences. Together with double bass player Manolo Cabras and drummer Joao Lobo he takes us for a trip that is both modern and risky, but always accessible.
Lubiana: Lubiana is a Belgian singer-songwriter with Cameroonian roots and a golden voice. Her musical path started at age 8 with piano and guitar.
Schntzl: Hendrik Lasure and Casper Van De Velde were still teenagers without a driver’s license when they took the Belgian jazz scene by storm. Since then, they have been awfully busy and became much-respected musicians.
The Brums: Some people think that jazz is a serious business. With a mix of brass, synths and some intense beats and influences ranging from hip hop to avant-garde, Liège quartet The Brums dispels that myth.
The website has a dedicated page where you can donate: www.jazz.be/en/donate/
