"One of the most inventive pioneers in
his genre", "piano wizard", "a keyboard magician" or
"a Fender Rhodes specialist", are some of the quotes describing Jozef
Dumoulin. The press qualified his music as "dreams about music and music
about dreams", "a sort of journey through the music of today that
remembers the music of yesterday and would like to reach that of the
future", offering "a subtle mixture between emotion and
experimentation". As a musician, Dumoulin is known for being able to maintain
his own voice in every musical context, wether it be traditional jazz,
improvised music, pop music or contemporary music.
Born in 1975 in Ingelmunster, in the pretty deep
Belgian countryside, from a very early age Jozef Dumoulin was totally attracted
to music and sound, fooling around on the two pianos at home. Throughout his
childhood and teenage years he attended classes in piano, organ, clavichord,
euphonium, harmony and some drums. Around the age of 16 he discovered jazz, and
began spending hours in the local library finding records and zapping the TV at
night in the hope of bumping into some live jazz. After highschool he studied
psychology for two years but then decided to go to the Brussels Conservatory
where he was tutored by Diederik Wissels and Nathalie Loriers. He also spent
two years at the Musikhochschule of Cologne taking classes with John Taylor.
Musically, Dumoulin has his fingers in lots of
pies. Initially he played the piano, as in his formal band with singer Barbara
Wiernik on the CD ‘Eclipse’ (Mogno 2001), an instrument he still deeply
cherishes. At the same time he has developed his unique sound on the Fender
Rhodes, combining it with electronics. Using this setup, he joined forces with
a number of existing formations (such as the Magic Malik Orchestra, Reggie
Washington Trio Tree, Octurn, Dre Pallemaerts group, Othin Spake, Benzine,
Narcissus Quartet, ...), still finding enough time to engage in other enriching
get-togethers (Brussels Jazz Orchestra, Toots Thielemans, Aka Moon, Belmondo
brothers, David Lynx, ...). He shared the stage and/or recorded with Mark
Turner, Bill Carothers, Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman, Jaime Torres, Sekouba
Traore, Skoota Warner, Trevor Dunn, Daniel Humair, Hilmar Jensson, Andrew
D'Angelo, Nate Wooley, Ron Miles, Joseph Bowie, Nelson Veras, Marc Ducret,
Ronny Jordan, Robin McKelle and T.N. Seshagopalan, Jef Lee Johnson, Kartet, Soo
Bin Park, Rick Margitza, among others.
In 2006 Jozef Dumoulin moved to Paris, where he
soon became active and increasingly interested in developing his own music. His
aim was to give a proper home to his own sound and style, and to distill his
own interpretation of all the musical styles he had practiced with as many
different bands.In the last years he released three cd's on the Bee Jazz label:
“Trees are always right” with his belgian band Lidlboj, “Rainbow Body” with his
trio made up of Eric Thielemans on drums and Trevor Dunn on bass, and "A
Fender Rhodes Solo" - first Fender Rhodes solo album in the history of the
instrument. All three cd's were critically acclaimed.End of 2013 Jozef got a
FAJE-grant to write for and play with Ellery Eskelin on saxophone and Dan Weiss
on drums. The trio is called 'The Red Hill Orchestra' and their first cd
'Trust' is going to be released on the french label Yolk end of october
2014.Other ongoing personal projects include a series duos; one with singer
Lynn Cassiers, one with guitarist Nelson Veras and one with pianist
Benoît Delbecq.
Besides, Jozef Dumoulin co-composed the music for
a quartet-cd with saxophonist Jerôme Sabbagh and for a double-cd with belgian
M-base/Messiaen cult-band Octurn.He also composed and performed music for
several movies.Jozef Dumoulin performed all over the globe and can be heard as
a sideman on over 50 records.
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