The track goes back to the days Koen Nys lived in Tokyo, Japan.  Whilst not referring to Japanese music, the music rather reflects on Koen’s life spent there.  Hikari Park is a large park in Japan, a country well known for its love of cherry blossoms.  The music brings you to a forest by night, not knowing exactly where you are going, with tree branches on the way.  The music is funky and groovy, with minimal harmonics and a lot of space for improvisation.

Hikari Park

This track is based on a repetitive simple baseline. Melody spontaneously emerged freewheeling on the piano. The melody is simple, almost folky, with little more to finetune. The whole - melody and baseline - appearing indisputable, Bram entitled the piece as ‘solid’. Further abrading and complementing rendered it more fluid ....

Solid

This track is inspired by ‘Lady in Satin’ by Billie Holiday. It consists of 11 measures and switches to a 2/4 time at the end, all to create a dodgy blues with special harmonies. The music swirls as does silk and satin in the wind.

Silk & Satin

The multi saxophone player Koen Nys (°1965) studied at the Jazz Studio in Antwerp (Belgium) as a young twenty-something. Afterwards he became a true globetrotter, studying music at the McGill University in Montreal (Canada), and residing in Tokyo (Japan) and New York (US). Currently he teaches at several music academies and performs with the Muze Jazz Orchestra (under the direction of Lieven Cambré), the KollecTive (under the direction of Gunther valckenier, to name only a few, and with his own Koen Nys Quintet. Some years ago he recorded the CD “Turtle Music” (WERF label) with the Koen Nys Quintet. And now you can discover him with his new trio “MAZZLE”.

KoenNys