Sound / Concert / Film

Leuven Jazz Op Zondag: Hanne De Backer & g a b b r o - As We Walk

Saxophonist Hanne De Backer walked the Belgian coastline with two fellow musicians, a camera crew and a camel.

Saxophonist Hanne De Backer presents the Belgian premiere of her film concert As We Walk. In recent years, De Backer has reached the top of the European improvisation scene. In 2017 she founded the collective g a b b r o, that aims to improvise in unusual places such as a prison or an old sewage system. For her latest project As We Walk, De Backer, drummer Raf Vertessen and pianist Andreas Bral walked along the Belgian coastline in the company of a camera crew and ... a camel. A straight line of about sixty-five kilometers.

The registration is surprisingly subdued and poetic. In quiet black-and-white images we see how the trio improvises on empty beaches, in a church or on a breakwater. Armed with backpacks, winter coats and a wagon, they defy the whooshing North Sea wind and the corrosive beach sand. The film ripples at a slow pace and shows the Belgian coast in all its battered glory. Striking are the surprised and amused looks of passers-by. The impression that reverberates most, however, is that of a concentrated peace, an attempt to slow down time imbued with a dreamy, almost melancholic poetry.

Following the film, De Backer, Bral and Vertessen will also release the third album by g a b b r o with a live concert.

In the context of Leuven Jazz.

19:30: doors + bar
20:00: start film + concert