Tabula Rasa #3 – Curator: Jozef Dumoulin (BE)

In the Tabula Rasa series, launched this spring, the House of Music is starting from scratch, as the title suggests, with three musicians who will give an improvisational concert after a day and a half of rehearsals on the second night of the series. Tabula Rasa's explicit aim is to encourage fresh modes of musical expression, improvisation and phrasing, independent of genre and for representatives of different musical genres. On each occasion a curator will invite the musicians, devise the concept and lead the formation, which is put together exclusively for the occasion and with the event then released as a House of Music recording. For the second of these concerts the Belgian keyboard player, Jozef Dumoulin (curator), Bálint Baráth (prepared piano) and Márton Bertók (modular synthesizer) make up the trio.

Belgian pianist and keyboard player Jozef Dumoulin has reinterpreted the Fender Rhodes in a way that is at once completely contemporary, eclectic and very personal. He was the first to present a complete solo program on the instrument. He is also a musician known for his openness and he can be heard playing on more than a hundred records. In addition to playing the Fender Rhodes, his own projects include The Red Hill Orchestra (a trio with Ellery Eskelin and Dan Weiss) and a duo with Benoît Delbecq, but he has also played in countless formations around the world. Described as one of the most imaginative pioneers of his genre, Dumoulin plays "a subtle blend of emotion and experimentation" and is renowned for his ability to retain his own voice in all kinds of musical contexts, be it traditional jazz, pop, improvised or contemporary. For this two-day project, he has chosen Bálint Baráth and Márton Bertók as his musicians, bringing together a variety of keyboard instruments and modular synths, as well as three different musical worlds.

While Bálint Baráth, as a pianist-composer and performer, faithfully serves the ideas and musical solutions of various eras, in his works he strives to make audible the personalised world of the universal spirit. He is interested in almost every product of the human creative process, be it a geometric form, a varied polyphonic texture, or the beliefs, rhythms and melodies of ancient cultures. He believes in the interdependence and pluralism of different artistic disciplines. His concerts and works are performed on three continents, from the United States to Japan.

Márton Bertók, also known as "Triglav", explores the areas between organic and synthetic sounds, mainly with his instrument the Music Easel, designed by Don Buchla in 1973. He is also a frequent contributor to the Budapest improvisational music community and a member of the conceptual folk music group Parasztok Atmoszférában [Peasants in the Atmosphere]

Language of pre-performance discussion: English