3'Ain Le Senghor - River Jazz Festival - Brussels

3'Ain is a trio in which Yamen Martini (trumpet) Otto Kint (upright bass) and Piet Maris (accordion) join forces: they bring a unique blend of worldwide jazz with Middle Eastern influences.

Yamen, originally from Syria, met Piet in Belgium in 2016. After collaborating on music for a theatre play, Piet invited Yamen to join Jaune Toujours as a guest musician, as you can hear on their most recent album Europeana. In the summer of 2019, Otto joined them, giving birth to 3’Ain.

The band name is based on the eighteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, ع, a vowel which is said to be difficult to pronounce for western people. As it is often represented as ‘3’ in chat and SMS conversations, and in transliteration as 'ain, 3'Ain seemed an appropriate name for a trio playing contemporary jazz and worldwide with oriental influences.

With their distinctive sound, they released their first EP on the Choux de Bruxelles label in May 2020, in full Covid lockdown. The subsequent full album, ‘Sea of Stories’ has been released in the Spring of 2023 and has received international acclaim in the press. Their music and song titles regularly refer to the surroundings and atmosphere of the place where they regularly work and create, in the port of Ostend, as does the single 'Scrambled Ensor'.