Empty Empty Cinema Paradiso

• 1Empty Empty09:13
• 2Dime Paranoiacs08:38
• 3Slaap Zacht05:46
• 4Shiva Lingam06:07
• 5I Am Light - Inverted08:19
• 6Slaap Zacht - Inverted04:59
• 7Asatoma04:31
• 8The Girl with the Flaxen Hair06:30
• 9Dime Paranoiacs - Inverted05:38
• Total Runtime59:41

Info for Empty Empty

Empty Empty is Cinema Paradiso's 3rd album.

Cinema Paradiso functions as a trio without a leader, consisting of Kurt Van Herck (Brussels Jazz Orchestra, Dizzie Gillespie Big Band, Bert Joris Quartet), Eric Thielemans (A Snare is a Bell, EARR, Talking About the Weather) and Willem Heylen (KRAKk, Aki, Sargam).

After his guest contributions on several tracks during the recording sessions that resulted in the compilation of the first two albums (Volume I and Volume II), Jozef Dumoulin (Lidlboj, The Red Hill Orchestra, True Company) was involved in the entire creation and recording process of Empty Empty.

Now focusing on original compositions (along with some Indian chants and a piece by Claude Debussy), this album also distinguishes itself from the previous two albums by presenting a new sonic landscape. Blending the rich timbres and textures of both the acoustic and electric sonic worlds of the musicians, we were looking to get a strong, direct, full sound that still retains enough detail and acoustic warmth.

The album was recorded and mixed by Joris Caluwaerts (Stuff) at his Finster Studio in Antwerp.

Eric Thielemans, drums, percussion
Jozef Dumoulin, Fender Rhodes, keyboard, grand piano
Kurt van Herck, tenor and soprano saxophone
Willem Heylen, guitar, percussion

Kurt Van Herck
Because she detects, in the youngest of her three sons, an undeniable musical talent and fascination for the saxophone, Kurt’s mother sends him to the local music school and brass band. Kurt is an enthusiastic pupil and he soon understands, bright as he is, that music is an open door to the world: aged sixteen he moves to Antwerp to study at the High School of the Arts. Today, too, the mellow metropolis is his base of operations.

After the High School of the Arts, he proceeds to attend the Jazz Studio with teachers like Dennis Luxion. But has to be, happens. Kurt nestles himself under the wings of his mentor John Ruocco, the driving force and teacher of an entire generation of Belgian saxophonists: Ben Sluijs, Frank Vaganée, Jeroen Van Herzeele, Erwin Vann, Bart Defoort. Under John Ruocco’ s guidance Kurt finds his own breath; his own musical path. Ruocco’ s no-nonsense aproach suits Kurt fine. If you want a lesson, you call and make an appointment. But if it turns out that you haven’ t studied hard enough, you get kicked out indefinitely, even before you got yourself in in the first place.

A bit later Kurt comes into contact with Jacques Pelzer who in turn becomes an important and inexhaustable source of inspiration.

But life apparently has many other facets than saxophone playing alone and the rent needs paying. Surrounded by talented musical brothers in arms, Kurt performs in a number of projects both in Belgium and abroad. A sampling of the colleagues with whom Kurt has already harmonized spiritedly: Dré Pallemaerts, Bert Joris, Diederik Wissels, Erwin Vann, Frank Vaganée, Philippe Aerts, Michel Herr, Daniel Romeo, Eric Legnini, Michel Hatzigorgiou, Riccardo Del Fra, Serge Lazarevitch, Nathalie Loriers, Kries Goessens,…

Beside his work in smaller formations Kurt also remains a much sought after big band player: the BRT-orchestra (unfortunately no more in existence), Act Big Band, Dizzie Gillespie Big Band, European Broadcast Union and the Brussels Jazz Orchestra, his musical homebase.

In 1997 he was awarded the Django d’ Or and in 1999 he was the “first choice” of listeners of the VRT (Flemish Radio and Televison).

Kurt has been associated with the Royal Flemish Conservatory since 1995 where he teaches, among others, saxophone, ensemble, and big band.

Eric Thielemans
Drummer and percussionist. Musical thinker. Travelling across music scenes and disciplines, Thielemans navigates by means of his own compass.

Most known for his resonant solo works like a Snare is a Bell, Sprang, Aural Mist and Bata Baba Loka, and many collaborations with musicians in the experimental music scene as well as the Jazz scene and indie folk/pop/rock scenes, Thielemans keeps on pushing the borders and expanding conscious aural spaces and territories.

Recently, and in some recent past, Thielemans has collaborated in trio together with the late Mika Vainio & Charlemagne Palestine (PVT released on Godbear April 2020), a trio together with Oren Ambarchi and Charlemagne Palestine (PAT released on Godbear July 2022) , a duo together with Oren Ambarchi (album to be released 2023), a duo with Billy Hart (Talking about the Weather), Chantal Acda (The Sparkle in our Flaws, Bounce Back, Puwawau, Saturday Moon), Marshall Allen (Sun Ra), Tape Cuts Tape, Distance Light & Sky, Jozef Dumoulin, Trevor Dunn, Shahzad Ismaily, Vaast Colson, Nico Dockx, Laurie Anderson, and many more. ​

More and more his personal research and output crosses the borders of music discipline to borrow practices and ways of thinking from mainly the performative arts, architecture, and the contemporary visual arts.

It also pushes him to dive ever more deeply into site specific work, where the very specific yet eternal now is collectively (both the musicians/artists and public/participants) explored and experienced through our ears and spatial awareness, bringing the experience of the music inside of the larger question of what it means to be an embodied spirit, a human being, in our everyday spaces and places. ​

In November 2022 Thielemans released a book publication On Resonance: Scores, Notes & Conversations, a culminative work that encompasses and surfaces the underlying currents within his life in and with music.

Within r-e-s-o-n-a-n-c-e he investigates the everyday magic through conversations, note writing and score writing to invite as many souls as possible to experience and co create the magic in the everyday.

To explore such a vast problem, Thielemans is convinced it requires multiple vantage points and knowledge registers from which to approach the matter.

For the occasion of the release of the book Thielemans curated a 48 hour score for CASSTL (the art space of contemporary Flemish painter Luc Tuymans and artistic collaborators Arocha-Schraenen) with talks, concerts, performances, art work, sculptures and installations.

Jozef Dumoulin
redefined the Fender Rhodes keyboard through a scope that is at the same time fully contemporary, eclectic and highly personal. He was the first to present a full solo program featuring the instrument. Furthermore he is known for his open and luminous approach to the piano and to music in general, always anchored in tradition without being burdened by it. Besides the Fender Rhodes solo, his own projects include The Red Hill Orchestra (a trio with Ellery Eskelin and Dan Weiss) and a duo with Benoît Delbecq.

Highly-demanded as a sideman, Jozef Dumoulin has recorded and toured with the finest of musicians in the domain of jazz, improvised music, rock and traditional music. He currently lives in Paris.

"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. At 18 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 joint 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, Maak Spirit, 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, ...). Over the years he shared the stage and/or recorded with Mark Turner, Bill Carothers, Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman, Ellery Eskelin, Dan Weiss, Benoît Delbecq, Jaime Torres, Sekouba Traore, Skoota Warner, Arve Henriksen, Stian Westerhus, Jon Irabagon, Tim Dahl, Craig Taborn, Kris Davis, Ethan Iverson, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, Jim Black, Keiji Haino, Trevor Dunn, Daniel Humair, Hilmar Jensson, Andrew D'Angelo, Nate Wooley, Ron Miles, Joseph Bowie, Nelson Veras, Marc Ducret, Ronny Jordan, Robin McKelle, T.N. Seshagopalan, B.C. Manjunath, Reggie Washington, Corry Smythe, Jef Lee Johnson, Kartet, Soo Bin Park, Rick Margitza, among many 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. He soon 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' was released on the french label Yolk in 2014.

Other ongoing personal projects include a series of duos; one with Belgian singer Lynn Cassiers, called Lilly Joel (‘What Lies In The Sea’ was released in 2015 on Sub Rosa), one with pianist Benoît Delbecq, ‘Plug And Pray’ (‘Evergreens’, 2017, dStream), another with Jim Black on drums and electronics, and a recent one - pandemic spin-off - with New York based drummer/sound-artist Flin van Hemmen, called 'Too Tall To Sing'.

In 2016 Jozef Dumoulin started an acoustic quintet, Orca Noise Unit, with Sylvaine Hélary on flutes, Antonin Tri Hoang on clarinets and saxophone, Bruno Chevillon on double bass and Toma Gouband on percussion. The record ‘A Beginner’s Guide to diving and Flying’ was released on Yolk Records in 2018.

Traces of his work with noise and rock influences are the records the the Japanese cult-musician Keiji Haino and drummer Teun Verbruggen (‘The Miracles Of Only One Thing’, Sub Rosa 2016) and his slightly controversial guitar-band Trojan Panda. Carton Records is releasing Trojan Panda’s first record ‘Peau’ end of March 2021.

Besides, Jozef Dumoulin is part of the trio Bará, bringing together his keyboards with the worlds of multi-instrumentalist Baba Sissoko and Iranian percussionist/producer Afra Mussawisade (‘Bolo Saba’, Homerecords 2020). He wrote and arranged all the music of the records ‘Eden’ (RAT Records 2019) of Teun Verbruggen’s band The Bureau Of Atomic Tourism, featuring Magnus Broo, Jon Irabagon, Julien Desprez and Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, besides Verbruggen and Dumoulin.

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 on over 100 records.

Willem Heylen
is a guitarist and producer based in Mechelen. As an artist he is mostly characterized by his diversity. His broad interest in musical genres, performing arts, music theatre, dance and beyond has led to his presence in a big scala of projects. Multidisciplinarity and collaboration are a central element in many of those projects.

As a composer and producer he has written music for several of the projects he is part of. For the past couple of years he has also been exploring solo work. Mostly experimental ambient music. This is a source of meditative and sonic exploration in which he finds a lot of inspiration as an artist. In the season 2022-2023 he is artist in resident in RATAPLAN where he has the opportunity to develop a couple of projects throughout the artistic season.

Some of his recent artistic collaborations include : Eric Thielemans, Kurt Van Herck, Jozef Dumoulin, Joachim Badenhorst, Mark Giuliana, Stef Kamil Carlens, LEKI and many more. He has performed at a diversity of clubs and festivals in Belgium and across the world

Currently he is most active in the projects AKI, Cinema Paradiso, LEKI, SARGAM, Claroscuro, and KRANKK. Projects that range from world music to atmospheric jazz and electronic music.

This album contains no booklet.