On the occasion of St Nicholas, Eastern Belgium at Night and Transonic present an evening dedicated to free improvisation and electroacoustic experimentation.
Saxophonist Jean-Jacques Duerinckx and composer-improviser Jean-Marc Foussat unfold their respective sound worlds, between timbral play, saturated sound matter and abstract textures. In a convivial atmosphere – liberated sounds, mulled wine, artisan cougnoux, Myre soup – this encounter weaves together radical practices, winter ritual and the simple desire to gather, in the warm, around a shared act of listening.
Jean–Jacques Duerinckx (Be)
Originally from Walloon Brabant, Jean-Jacques Duerinckx discovered the saxophone in 1985 as an autodidact and followed academic training with Philippe Leblanc. He began his musical research during Fabrizio Cassol’s chamber music classes in the early 1990s and subsequently within the free improvisation collective Inaudible. Working as much on the interpretation of complex compositions including Composition 113 by Anthony Braxton as exercises as on sound exploration on the sopranino saxophone, JJ D invests 100% in free improvisation.
He tirelessly organizes the O.M.F.I. concert series. in Brussels. Records and tours with John Russell, Matthieu Safatly in trio, with Adrian Northover in duo. He has collaborated with sound and multimedia artists such as Peter Friess, Harold Schellinckx, Didier Nietzsche, Anton Mobin, Isa*Belle+Paradise Now. He has performed in concert with, among others, Lol Coxhill, Jim Denley, Jacques Foschia, Michel Doneda and Pascal Marzan, and has toured the Netherlands (Roadburn Festival), Germany (Moers Festival), Poland, France, Italy, Great Britain and Budapest.
In 2018, he founded “Unreal Brotherface” with the late acousmatic composer Stephan Dunkelman, whom he met in 2004 within Zohara, an ensemble created by Zahava Seewald produced by John Zorn (Tzadik 2004).
Unreal Brotherface participated, among others, in the City Sonic festival in 2019 and in the Belgian Music Days 2020.
MxSx, his duet with Dimitri Coppe, was created in Flagey during the 2022 Sound Week in tribute to the composer. The confrontation of his sound expertise with other modes of artistic expression such as visual arts, performance, contemporary dance (Patricia Kuypers, Stephanie Auberville, Hisako Horikawa…), remains essential to his artistic research. He participates in CEPI founded by double bassist Barre Philips.
In 2015, he met multimedia artist Alexandra Dementieva with whom he played in the duo Tunnel Hearing, recently joined by cellist/double bassist Jose Bedeur. In March 2020, during the pandemic, he created Lamaφ (lamaphi), a multidisciplinary protean group, bringing together dancers, musicians and videographers. He is founder of the OMFI collective (2011/2019) with the cellist Matthieu Safatly as well as the lab’OMFI: a transdisciplinary experimental laboratory which was held at the Halles Saint -Géry in Brussels from 2017 to 2019.
He is the saxophonist of the stoner rock group Neptunian Maximalism between 2018 and 2022 as well as a member of the experimental music collective ZAAAR with HP des Rosiers, Didié Nietzsche, Guillaume Cazalet and Sebastien Smith.
Il est le saxophoniste du groupe “stoner rock” Neptunian Maximalism entre 2018 et 2022 ainsi que membre du collectif de musique expérimentale ZAAAR avec HP des Rosiers, Didié Nietzsche, Guillaume Cazalet et Sebastien Smith.
Jean-Marc Foussat (Fr)
Jean-Marc Foussat (born in 1955 in Oran) is a Franco-Algerian electroacoustic musician, improviser and sound engineer, a figure as discreet as he is essential in European free music. A guitarist in his early days in the 1970s, he soon turned to analogue synthesizers (notably the EMS Synthi AKS and VCS3), magnetic tape and collage techniques inherited from musique concrète. At the same time, he began systematically recording free jazz and improvised music concerts in France and across Europe, working for leading labels and developing his own workspace, Studio Pyjama.
As a composer, he has produced landmark works such as *Abattage* (1981/1983), a dense, hallucinatory solo piece that defines a large part of his sound world, followed by *Nouvelles* and numerous solo and small-ensemble recordings. He co-founded the Potlatch label in the late 1990s before launching, in 2012, his own label FOU Records, which documents the European improvisation scene with great fidelity: solos, duos, trios, large ensembles, as well as reissues drawn from his vast archive of concert tapes.
On stage, Foussat performs solo or within formations such as Marteau Rouge (with Jean-François Pauvros and Makoto Sato) or Aliquid (with Sylvain Guérineau), and collaborates with a wide network of improvisers (Noël Akchoté, Joëlle Léandre, Daunik Lazro, Joe McPhee, Urs Leimgruber, among others). His highly physical playing combines hands-on manipulation of analogue synths, saturation, concrete sounds and processed voices, always in the service of the improvised moment. Based in the south of France, he continues today a dual activity as creator and “go-between”: regular releases on FOU Records and Bandcamp, concert recordings, and sustained participation in festivals and venues dedicated to experimental music, which makes him one of the key artisans of the sonic memory of free music over the past forty years.
Informations
- 06.12.2025 | 20:30
- Chalet de Haute Nuit
- Rue de la Charrette 43, 4130 Esneux
- Free entrance
Production
- Transcultures, Eastern Belgium at Night
- Transonic Label
