August&Walter #5: Bram De Looze / Jasper Stadhouders Blood Cloud

In February 2023 Bram De Looze took on our invitation to join us for a 960 km journey to Löbau to go test a brand new August Förster grand piano. One of the first to touch the Förster, we're very happy to have Bram in Walter for a public rendez-vous with this excellent instrument.

De Looze’s solo career began in a surprising way with ‘Piano e forte‘ (2016), a project for which he approached historical instruments from a contemporary perspective. The switch to Chris Maene’s Straight Strung Grand Piano for ‘Switch The Stream‘ (2018) indicated a renewed search for movement, evolution and introspection. With ‘Colour Talk‘ (2020), he continued this solo trajectory on an already revolutionary piano model, again seeking innovation from within.

After De Looze’s second solo album in 2018 came the international trio record Vice Versa. For it, he teamed up with two resounding names from the jazz world: New York master drummer Eric McPherson (Jackie McLean, Andrew Hill, Pharoah Sanders, Fred Hersch) and impressionable Berlin bassist Felix Henkelhausen (Jim Black, Nate Wooley, Lotte Anker). As in all his collaborations, expressiveness, inventiveness and creativity were invariably central to this trio.

And the future looks bright. Bram De Looze’s 4th solo album will be released on January 19, 2024 on the Dutch label DOX Records. The key ingredient of this album is once again taking on the challenge of daring to leave music open in the moment itself and being connected to the potential it offers.

Mary Oliver violin and viola
Jasper Stadhouders acoustic guitar and mandolin
Uldis Vitols contrabass
Onno Govaert drums and percussion
Jaap Blonk voice and electronics 

Plucked, strummed and bowed string instruments, drums, percussion, a self built analog modular synthesizer and an electric organ. There’s a strong focus on the contrasts and similarities between the directness of the acoustic instruments and the process-managing “indirectness” of the electronic modular synthesizer, as well as between improvisation and composition; they meet at the end of the same spectrum.  

The instruments could sound as far apart from each other as Mars from planet Earth or can blend seamlessly like a body of water, or any and everything in between; with these musicians and this instrumentation, sonic possibilities are limitless.

Blood Cloud, initiated by Jasper Stadhouders, started as an improvising unit in 2017, playing a few gigs in smaller venues around Amsterdam. Jasper then started to write music specifically catered to this group and they played the Doek Festival “This is Our Music” (2018) and, after a two year hiatus, they returned to the Doek Festival “LIVE!” (2020). They started to include compositions by the late great Cor Fuhler and Sanne van Hek, and by the band members themselves. The repertoire is continuously expanded by whatever inspires the band members. 

For this concert at Walter, original band members Frank Rosaly and Harpo 't Hart will be replaced respectively by the equally idiosyncratic drummer Onno Govaert and the highly unique and incomparable Jaap Blonk on vocals and electronics. Blood Cloud will play a set of music especially catered for this occasion.