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Dirk Schreurs
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Music
Music takes me from nowhere to now here
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Profile Information
- What is your profession?
- Musician, Producer, Composer, Listener, Educator
- What Instrument Do you Play?
- Piano
- Where Are you located?
- in As, a small village in Belgium (Flemish speaking community)
- How did you find out about TGJN?
- from a friend
- About Me:
- I am a professional pianist, composer and teacher at the Jazz Department of the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music. Nowadays I am on stage with the Roman Korolik Group, Scora, Chromatic Banana and my trio DS3
- Website:
- http://www.dirkschreurs.com
BIOGRAPHY
Dirk Schreurs started playing the piano at the age of 6. Having taken a solid classical training at the Music Academy of Neerpelt (Flanders), he graduated with the highest academic distinction. At the age of 15 he sat in with R&B-giants such as Bob Hall, Dave Peabody and the Deluxe Blues Band at the Belgian Folk & Blues festival, playing blues, boogie-woogie and gospel piano. At the European Youth Music Festival (1984) the Dutch Television (NOS) recorded Dirk’s performance of the jazz-musical “On the town” scored by Leonard Bernstein.
In 1989 Dirk graduated as a Master in Germanic Philology at the Catholic University of Louvain. For three years he worked as a scientific researcher in the field of Computational Linguistics at the Linguistics Department of the Louvain Faculty of Arts. He gave lectures on “Controlled Language” at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and at the Institute of Science and Technology of the Manchester University. The syntactic and the semantic aspects of linguistics and improvised music are still two of his major points of interest.
Moreover, Dirk came into contact with Enrico Pieranunzi, Trilok Gurtu, John Abercrombie, Jack de Johnette, Martial Solal, Daniel Goyonne, and David Kikoski, all of whom gave spiritual direction to his dynamic search for jazz and improvised music. He has composed and arranged over 250 tunes, many of which have found their way not only to the performing stage but also to the realm of radio & television around Europe. Next to playing the acoustic piano and electro-acoustic keyboards, Dirk also operates vintage synthesizers and analog modules.
The Belgian Artistic Promotion of SABAM selected "The Void" to be the award winning composition at the 2001 Hoeilaart International Jazz Contest. One year later, the Belgian Artistic Promotion of SABAM selected "Eva" to be the award winning composition at the 2002 Hoeilaart International Jazz Contest.
Since 1994 Dirk has been a professor of music, teaching piano/keyboards, improvisation theory, ensemble and jazz methodology at the Jazz Department of the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music.
DISCOGRAPHY
1994 Beyond Ballads - Dirk Schreurs & Walter Baeken
1998 Live! - Triassic Jazz
2000 Extemporizations - Dirk Schreurs solo piano
2003 Berlin - Scora
2006 Minds of Glass - Dirk Schreurs
2008 Imagine Mars - Scora
2009 Strokes - Scora
GEAR
Rhodes 73 Mk I electric piano
Yamaha S90XS music synthesizer
Korg CX-3 combo organ
Yamaha CP stage piano
Yamaha Stagepass 500
Yamaha AW1600 professional audio workstation
MY MUSIC PLAYER
"Faculties of inner science" was recorded live with the Roman Korolik Band at the 2008 Motives Jazz festival in Genk, Belgium.
"Waiting patiently" is a track from the CD "Imagine Mars", which I recorded with Scora (featuring Walter Baeken on saxophone) in the summer of 2008. We did a tour in Russia. The album will be released at the end of 2009.
"Rhythm of the Essence" is a track from my solo album "Minds of Glass" (2006).
"All blues" is my personal musical approach to the classic Miles Davis tune, which I recorded live with my trio called Triassic Jazz (1998). This Belgian trio features Roman Korolik on bass and Bruno Meeus on drums.
Enjoy!
Dirk Schreurs started playing the piano at the age of 6. Having taken a solid classical training at the Music Academy of Neerpelt (Flanders), he graduated with the highest academic distinction. At the age of 15 he sat in with R&B-giants such as Bob Hall, Dave Peabody and the Deluxe Blues Band at the Belgian Folk & Blues festival, playing blues, boogie-woogie and gospel piano. At the European Youth Music Festival (1984) the Dutch Television (NOS) recorded Dirk’s performance of the jazz-musical “On the town” scored by Leonard Bernstein.
In 1989 Dirk graduated as a Master in Germanic Philology at the Catholic University of Louvain. For three years he worked as a scientific researcher in the field of Computational Linguistics at the Linguistics Department of the Louvain Faculty of Arts. He gave lectures on “Controlled Language” at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and at the Institute of Science and Technology of the Manchester University. The syntactic and the semantic aspects of linguistics and improvised music are still two of his major points of interest.
Moreover, Dirk came into contact with Enrico Pieranunzi, Trilok Gurtu, John Abercrombie, Jack de Johnette, Martial Solal, Daniel Goyonne, and David Kikoski, all of whom gave spiritual direction to his dynamic search for jazz and improvised music. He has composed and arranged over 250 tunes, many of which have found their way not only to the performing stage but also to the realm of radio & television around Europe. Next to playing the acoustic piano and electro-acoustic keyboards, Dirk also operates vintage synthesizers and analog modules.
The Belgian Artistic Promotion of SABAM selected "The Void" to be the award winning composition at the 2001 Hoeilaart International Jazz Contest. One year later, the Belgian Artistic Promotion of SABAM selected "Eva" to be the award winning composition at the 2002 Hoeilaart International Jazz Contest.
Since 1994 Dirk has been a professor of music, teaching piano/keyboards, improvisation theory, ensemble and jazz methodology at the Jazz Department of the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music.
DISCOGRAPHY
1994 Beyond Ballads - Dirk Schreurs & Walter Baeken
1998 Live! - Triassic Jazz
2000 Extemporizations - Dirk Schreurs solo piano
2003 Berlin - Scora
2006 Minds of Glass - Dirk Schreurs
2008 Imagine Mars - Scora
2009 Strokes - Scora
GEAR
Rhodes 73 Mk I electric piano
Yamaha S90XS music synthesizer
Korg CX-3 combo organ
Yamaha CP stage piano
Yamaha Stagepass 500
Yamaha AW1600 professional audio workstation
MY MUSIC PLAYER
"Faculties of inner science" was recorded live with the Roman Korolik Band at the 2008 Motives Jazz festival in Genk, Belgium.
"Waiting patiently" is a track from the CD "Imagine Mars", which I recorded with Scora (featuring Walter Baeken on saxophone) in the summer of 2008. We did a tour in Russia. The album will be released at the end of 2009.
"Rhythm of the Essence" is a track from my solo album "Minds of Glass" (2006).
"All blues" is my personal musical approach to the classic Miles Davis tune, which I recorded live with my trio called Triassic Jazz (1998). This Belgian trio features Roman Korolik on bass and Bruno Meeus on drums.
Enjoy!
Dirk Schreurs's Photos
Dirk Schreurs's Videos
Dirk Schreurs's Blog
Minds of Glass by Marta Bressi and Dirk Schreurs to be screened at the 2009 International Independent Film and Video Festival in New York on October 24.
Posted on September 22, 2009 at 2:26am —
Minds of Glass Video Art Project Exhibition at the City of Buenos Aires from Oct. 28 till Nov. 18
Minds of Glass, the video art exhibition by visual artist Marta Bressi & composer/pianist Dirk Schreurs, will be open to the public at the Borges Cultural Center in the heart of the City of Buenos Aires from Oct. 28 till Nov. 18.
Posted on May 16, 2009 at 9:19am —
SCORA has a new CD out now: STROKES - www.scoramusic.webs.com
The Belgian SCORA quintet presented their new album STROKES at the exhibition by the Antwerp master painter Jef Diels on March 22. This band featuring a.o. pianist Dirk Schreurs recorded thirteen new compositions by Walter Baeken.
Check out: www.scoramusic.webs.com
Posted on March 27, 2009 at 3:03am —
Pianist and composer Dirk Schreurs has a new website www.dirkschreurs.com
Enjoy ! d.
Posted on January 8, 2009 at 5:53am —
About
MEMBER NOTES
Dear Tamm E:
Just a note to tell you that it is nice to read about you!!!
You share so much great info about others and about the music, but nice to know that you are WAILIN' yourself and getting appreciation!!
Global Jazz Network is a really important way for all of us to keep hooked up and informed and to SLOWLY BUT SURELY SPREAD THE MESSAGE AND THE PHILOSOPHY of what Jazz is in its many different forms and what the styles are/is all about.
Just played for Paquito's honoring and received gold medal
John Faddis, save Brubeck, James moody and a bunch of KILLER YOUNG players and we all played and spoke about Paquito and jazz and all fine music
and Roberta Gamborini, who was excellent.
wish you had been there!
Through you, Donald Harrison hooked me up with Pittsburgh Jazz info and I feel like i am living there just reading about all the great happenings.
As Fall is here, I am back to my normal insane schedule, but wanted to write you back BEFORE The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS goes into effect. I am my own secretary, so I am dedicated but SLOW!
And I can't fire myself as my own secretary or I might get hit with an Age Discrimination Lawsuit (in case I decided to sue myself for clerical incompetence).
As of this moment, a new documentary film is being made about me, to be released a few months after my 80th birthday, which is coming up next year Nov. 17, 2010. (12 months from now).
The film will end with the videoing of the big 80th birthday bash at Symphony Space in NYC and then have snippets of films from the past, with all kinds of fun stuff from the 50's thru today.
It will be called "David Amram: The First 80 Years"
Fortunately, I don't have to edit the hundreds of hours of footage or do new music the score, since the film maker, Larry Kraman is also the founder of Newport Classics recordings and knows all my symphonic as well as operatic, theater, film and jazz and world music work, so I am in good hands!!
The same people at Newport Classics Recordings are also making a Spoken Word series for I-Tunes, with me reading from my three books Vibrations, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac and Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat.
And they are also recording some of my chamber music compositions and a new jazz record,
Next Spring my opera "12th Night", with libretto by Joe Papp (all words of Shakespeare), is having its eighth production and being FILMED!! Even most dead composers aren't that lucky!!!
This last five weeks I have appeared all over the country at concerts of my music, conducting and playing, doing spoken word with music, jazz, folk and world music festivals, film festivals and readings from my books.
Just the first week of October, I played Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival in Lowell Mass, then the at midnight , following my last concert there , drove all night to Lagaurda Airport to catch the early Sunday mornng flight for the annual Farm Aid Concert in St Louis, where i played with Willie Nelson's band. The next morning (Monday the 5th , I flew bck to NYC in tme for my monthly concert at Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.
The next night (Tuesday the 6th) the memorial at Symphony Space for Frank Mccourt, and the next day Wednesday the 7th) the celebration of the new authorized biography of Thelonious Monk with members of his family and musicians I have known since I first arrived in NYC in 1955!!
The 11th i flew off to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates,( i got at least get a few hours sleep) and tried to catch up on over 200 e-mails during the 13 hour flight, before arriving there and performing a concert of global music in conjunction with the score I composed for Teri McLuhan's new documentary feature film The Frontier Ghandi.
Then back in the USA in time to do programs centered around a performance of my Saxophone concerto Ode to Lord Buckley, in Loudoun Virginia ..
Then I went off to Toronto Nov 1st for a concert and appearance at the Diaspora Film Festival .
Now i am back at home hiding out composing and writing!
I am starting my fourth book "David Amram: The First 80 Years", (the same name as the new doc film being made about me), which will be finished at the end of next year and will end, like the film, with the monstro birthday bash concert for my Big 80... 12 months from now....(Nov 17 2010) in New York.
And every day, still finding time to continue composing a new orchestral work, having been doing it while on the run, and now every minute when I can hide out at the Farm in between travels.
And performing whenever possible with my three kids, each of whom have their own bands.
So as the BIG 80 approaches twelve months from now, (2010) while I may be still shy, I am not yet the retiring type.
Most of my ever-changing my schedule info. when i can get my elderly secretary (unfortunately myself) to type it up, is posted on my web page www.davidamram.com under Upcoming Events.
And my e-mail amramdavid@aol.com is always the best way to reach me as I carry my laptop with me everywhere, and Facebook, MySpace, etc., is hard to deal with and not always reliable!
You might find it fun to access an old performance of my 1971 Rondo a la Turca on the Internet for FREE!!!
The person who is conducting the Chicago Symphony and playing the middle eastern flute (who looks like my grandson) is actually a much younger looking me in 1977, recording for a PBS network TV show about my music. Pepper Adams and Jerry Dodgion are also playing.
In 1977, most of members of the Chicago Symphony who appear on the recording of this performance had never heard, much less ever played, very much music from the Middle East, and since I write everything out on paper accurately to indicate the way it should be played, that's what they were playing, and they actually began to sound like the Radio Beirut Orchestra, and suddenly as the piece went on, they started feeling something different than they had ever felt before, as they played.
It is really fun to watch their faces as they started getting ingo the old time magical groove that Middle eastern music creates and takes you into.
During the first few minutes of the piece, you can see the musicians all playing up a storm but looking as if they were thinking that I was an alien from another planet in outer space, and had brought some extra terrestrial music with me for them to play.
And then as the piece progresses, you can see, as well as hear, that by the end of the piece, the idiom of this music got them excited enough to be actually enjoying playing it!!
And playing it really well!
That's what music, like film, novels, poetry, painting, dance, language and good HOME COOKING does for all of us.
It takes you to that place from where it comes, and makes you feel that you now have a new home in a new part of the world.
I send cheers from that endless road and wish you joy and energy for all you do
David
I was just saying that you knocked this out of the park with TGJN. We have needed something like this for so long and I am telling my friends about this. I said that it is sort of like a myspace for jazz but it is actually so much more. This is real. The people here truly love jazz and we know people like that are not your average people.
I have felt for a long time that straight-ahead jazz has been slipping away from us. I have hope now that there will be a resurgence (or shall I say an insurgency:-) to bring this baby back full force!
You just knocked it out of the park. Thanks again.
xoxo,
Janie
Events
-
Mel Brown Quartet
March 25, 2009 at 8pm to March 27, 2013 at 11pm – Jimmy Mak's
-
Luigi Ruberti Quintet
December 4, 2009 at 9pm to December 6, 2009 at 12pm – Naples
-
ROME NEAL in Concert
December 5, 2009 at 9pm to December 6, 2009 at 1am – The Nuyorican Poets Cafe
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“Grazie”
December 17, 2009 from 6pm to 9pm – Ivrea
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Saturday JAZZ Nights at Chelsea Wine Bar
December 19, 2009 at 8:30pm to December 20, 2009 at 12:30am – Chelsea Wine Bar
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BACK ALLEY PLAYERS@NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
January 2, 2010 from 9pm to 11pm – NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
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BACK ALLEY PLAYERS@NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
January 2, 2010 from 9pm to 11pm – NUYORICAN POETS CAFE
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Tish Oney
January 9, 2010 from 7:15pm to 7:30pm – Hilton Hotel - New York Suite
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Tish Oney
January 9, 2010 from 10pm to 10:15pm – Hilton Hotel - Beekman Suite
Birthdays
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Please let me know of any performance opportunities.
i.e.festivals, symphonies, concerts, tours, club
TamM E
Best wishes for the New Year that's almost here!
tommie
nz
Happy Holidays and all the best in 2009!
Much Love,
May
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