Keeping Toots Thielemans’ legacy alive and kicking
Throughout the month of May, both established names and up-and-comers will demonstrate that there’s more to Flemish jazz than Toots Thielemans – one Vienna show at a time
“Sons of Toots” series in Austria
Throughout the month of May, the Austrian capital Vienna will hosts five Sons of Toots evenings of Flemish and Brussels jazz with both household names and up-and-coming voices performing at the Vienna jazz club Porgy & Bess.
But don’t expect bland imitations. The artists on the bill offer a mix of talent, perseverance and originality, with personal styles that seem to point to a natural dislike of borders. Antwerp graphic novelist and painter Philip Paquet, for instance, is one such example. A big jazz fan, he wrote and illustrated a graphic novel about – and in collaboration with – the Oscar-winning Brussels Jazz Orchestra (BJO) a couple of years ago.
Those black-and-white (and sometimes red) illustrations, as well as selected drawings from his other books, are on view in a concurrent exhibition at the Porgy & Bess club. Inspired by André Franquin’s dark and cynical masterpiece Zwartkijken, Paquet’s raven black comic novels tell the bittersweet story of jazz at large by zooming in on the lives of Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.
Working with BJO and trumpeter Bert Joris (pictured), Paquet noticed how few words jazz musicians h ad to exchange to get the score right. The same Joris, who won the annual Jazzmozaïek Award just last month, will close the Sons of Toots shows, while Paquet will start the series off.
Foreign inspiration
On the other evenings, senior jazz performers such as guitar virtuoso Philip Catherine and saxophonist Fabrizio Cassol, frontman of the avant-garde trio AKA Moon, will demonstrate that their music knows no boundaries.
Born in London but raised in Brussels by his English mother and Belgian father, Catherine played from an early age with the big international names who visited the city’s jazz clubs. Eager to continue improving his skills, he travelled to the US to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He continues to learn his trade, he always says, and today emphases how much younger musicians have to teach him.
In the 1990s, Cassol went on a research trip to the Central African Republic with Greek bassist Michel Hatzigeorgiou and Belgian drummer Stéphane Gall to study the rhythms of the pygmies. They went on to mix the tribal melodies of the rain forests with their Balkan-influenced sound – the birth of AKA Moon.
“Sons of Toots” also keeps its finger on the pulse with its selection of young Flemish jazz musicians, several of whom have also been spending a lot of time abroad. Saxophonist Robin Verheyen moved to New York to cross-fertilise with the local, cosmopolitan scene. His younger colleague, drummer Lander Gyselinck, has also been spending a lot of time in America’s jazz capital, in the process giving breathing space to his new bands, STUFF and Ragini Trio. Finally, there’s Teun Verbruggen, also a drummer, who will be performing with Too Noisy Fish in Vienna.
5-24 May at Porgy & Bess, Riemergasse 11, Vienna
www.flanders.at
