For his first performance as Artist in Residence at the 2025 Brussels Jazz Festival – Flagey 2025, pianist Bram De Looze had assembled a veritable dream team. With Joey Baron on drums (De Looze has already worked with him in MiXMonk), Thomas Morgan on bass and Hank Roberts on cello, the band looked impressive – but also like a challenge.
Bram De Looze’s years in New York have given him access to a fine international network which has already led to some great projects. And yet his Flemish roots are not forgotten; they make him one of the most popular musicians in Belgium. The large hall at Flagey had sold out months in advance, and the reason why that had happened was palpably not just because of the American musicians he had invited.
De Looze had composed quite a few new pieces especially for this first concert with this band in mind, with Roberts’ cello occupying a prominent position as the leading melodic voice. As a result, the atmosphere of the mostly subdued pieces was somewhere between chamber jazz, contemporary and jazz. It is an idiom which these men all have completely at their fingertips.
It truly was a concert like no other. It was so beautiful in atmosphere and balance, you could hear a pin drop in the large hall. Magnificently and intensely played with four musicians at the top of their game. As if the freshness of the pieces was still fully there after two days of playing together. The great class of De Looze, as composer and pianist, flowed smoothly into that of the other musicians.
It would be wrong to think of this as a concert by De Looze as a young musician rising to international stature. This was a collaboration of musicians who are each other’s equals. They appeared to be as much at ease playing with each other as they were in awe of each other’s talents. It was not just beautiful to watch, but also stunningly moving to listen to.
De Looze’s pieces have everything to give these musicians room to give of their best. And to do so without show-off soloing, but rather by staying in the stylistic world of each of the compositions gave the pieces even more richness. It was not until the encore, A Hundred Years by Roberts, that the band settled into a groove, surprisingly set up from Roberts’ cello. Again, their mastery appeared effortless.
With De Looze’s life and experiences finding expression in the titles of the pieces, as he explained in the introductions (the first piece Tutu referred to his 4-year-old daughter attending a concert by her father for very the first time), the concert was a major celebration of the freedom and individuality of jazz. Jazz that knows no boundaries but is just about the deepening of experiences and the unleashing of the imagination. Bram De Looze’s first as Artist in Residence was nothing short of magisterial. Within this festival’s first 24 hours we have witnessed a new major highlight in the ten years of the Brussels Jazz Festival.
The remaining concerts in Bram De Looze’s tenure as Artist-in- Residence at the Brussels Jazz Festival – Flagey 2025 are:
* Bram De Looze & DoYeon Kim on Sunday 12 Jan at 5pm
* Vice Versa feat. McPherson & Henkelhausen on Thursday 16 Jan at 7 30pm
