Bram de Looze
Biography Bram de Looze
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.
