rare vogels // 23 residents weekend

Let us present to you the coolest strange birds in Kuregem: our 23* Walter residents! Walter is proud as a peacock and will be showing his five shiniest feathers of 23: Andrej Thompson, Anton Lambert, Bo Van der Werf, Ewoud Van Eetvelde and Nils Vermeulen. Five musical personalities 'van diverse pluimage' who got the chance to expand their universes under Walter's wings.

23 was our first year of an intensified residency program, discovering how to support musicians in the field of free impro, jazz and avant garde music. Exciting like a first take off, turbulent at times but all flights landed well. Time to applaud for Walter's Rare Vogels! Come over and discover their newest projects and ideas.

Buy your ticket and enjoy all concerts, workshop, open jam and movie showings during the whole residency weekend. For the workshop on Saturday, we kindly ask to you to book your spot in advance.

*Oh yeah, let's also proudly announce Walter's 24 residents: Clara Lévy, Lynn Cassiers, Manolo Cabras, Sam Comerford and Suzan Peeters.

In 23, as a part of his residency research in Walter, bass player Nils Vermeulen (Jukwaa, Frame Trio, Kabas) invited Nemø ensemble for a monthly work session. Fueled by his explorations in the acoustic universe, Vermeulen created different worlds for the ensemble to interact. Main key for the work sessions was the language of just intonation. Using the harmonic experience as a benchmark for determining intervals creates a very personal and intuitive way of making music together. Because every individual decision influences the whole, the musicians must be as observant as possible and make their chosen path audible. All options are already available.

Nils will open up these work sessions for all musicians interested in sharing the experience of just intonation as a way to start improvising. Together with Nemø Ensemble members Elisabeth Klinck (violin) and Jasmijn Lootens (cello) he will lead a workshop session at Walter with ten other musicians. It's open and free for you, if you register your participation via the ticket link.

Ewoud Van Eetvelde - guitar
Jelle Meeze - guitar
Stijn Demuynck - drums

Ewoud Van Eetvelde invited his trio Zap Zaltan for a residency in Werkplaats Walter. The last two years Van Eetvelde has been working with surround speaker setups. Anticipating the residency he prepared selfmade speakers, to add them to the house system. During the week in Walter they researched how to play with, augment and animate the dimensionality of their live setup by using controllers, space, algorithms and self-referential concepts from the Zaltan universe.

Elisabeth Klinck - violin
Nils Vermeulen - double bass

Elisabeth and Nils share a fascination for sound. Nils' residency work in Walter included a full September week of exploring this acoustic violin-contrabass duo, trying to fuse their worlds of sound to the point of unraveling them.

Andrej Thompson - tenor saxophone, compositions
Andreas Bral - piano
Robert Jukič- double bass
Matthias De Waele - drums

For his Walter residency Andrej Thompson created two new ensembles. The first of which is called Trinity: Consciousness, Art and Hypostasis and is an ensemble investigating the artists experience of reality. The central aim was to transcend the improviser/composer dichotomy and thereby allow the performer to enter a state of heightened consciousness where the ensemble can express a more aggregate understanding of reality.

Two bodies of work have been written called Virga (recorded in July 2023) and The Universal and The Personal (due to be recorded in January 2024.) In Virga, transformation is explored through the free jazz idiom. Virga is rain that evaporates before reaching the ground; the water undergoes a gradual physical transformation from droplet to vapour. The Universal and The Personal is a more experimental work that uses large sections of prepared piano and focuses on much shorter fragments of music. This concert will feature the music from Virga. 

Air traffic controller for a classic Kuregem jam will be 23 resident Andrej Thompson. With his golden quartet he will be opening the jam session.

I guess it’s not a jazz standards jam so maybe I bring in some basic sketches/concepts from my residency?

Let's see how Andrej keeps us jammin'! Take your instruments and inspiration and come over to make this jam an unforgettable experience together. We provide a full PA, two guitar amps, grand piano, a bass amp and drums.