Gaume Jazz : Johan Dupont Trio

A classically trained pianist, Johan Dupont studied improvised music with Garett List at the Conservatoire de Liège, and jazz with Eric Legnini at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles. An inquisitive and playful improviser with a never demonstrative ease, he has accompanied gypsy guitarist Samson Smith and opera singers Julie Mossay and Sarah Laulan. 

Another graduate of the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles and Michel Hatzigeorgiou's class, Bo Waterschoot also studied at the prestigious Musician Institute in Los Angeles. She has accompanied artists as diverse as Urban Trad, Sébastien Duthoit, Bruno Castellucci and Sophie Cavez, to name but a few, in repertoires ranging from folk and contemporary to jazz, pop, metal, rock and Brazilian music. 

A former pupil of jazz legend Billy Hart and Georges-Elie Octors (who directed the Musiques Nouvelles ensemble), Stephan Pougin is an eclectic percussionist, resistant to musical boundaries, as evidenced by a career already rich in collaborations, from Tuur Floorizone to Panta Rhei, from Steve Houben to Mikis Théodorakis, from baroque music to jazz, or from folk to Bossa Nova. 

As you'd expect, these three are not the kind of musicians who are afraid of mixing and mingling. Johan Dupont's unclassifiable compositions delicately explore a musical space bathed in childhood and nostalgia, populated by bittersweet memories of a lost paradise, where everything was possible, where nothing was missing. It's overwhelming and luminous. It took three artists as intrepid as they are sensitive to venture into such territory. 

The concert coincides with the release of the trio's long-awaited debut album on Flak Records. After the concert in Liège, this is the trio's second exclusive release for Gaume Jazz.