Johan Dupont Trio

It’s a fact: the trio formed by pianist Johan Dupont, bassist Bo Waterschoot and drummer/percussionist Stephan Pougin promises an album filled with emotion.

A classically trained pianist and curious, playful improviser, Johan Dupont studied improvised music with Garett List at the Liège Conservatoire, and jazz with Eric Legnini at the Brussels Royal Conservatoire.

Another graduate of the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles and Michel Hatzigeorgiou’s class, Bo Waterschoot went on to study at the prestigious Musician Institute in Los Angeles. She has excelled in repertoires ranging from folk and contemporary to jazz, pop, metal, rock and Brazilian music.

A former pupil of jazz legend Billy Hart and Georges-Elie Octors (who directed the Musiques Nouvelles ensemble), Stephan Pougin is an eclectic percussionist, resistant to musical boundaries, as evidenced by a career already rich in collaborations with Tuur Floorizone, Steve Houben and Mikis Théodorakis, among others.

As you’d expect, these three are not the sort of people who are afraid of mixing and mingling. Johan Dupont’s unclassifiable compositions delicately explore a musical space bathed in childhood and nostalgia, inhabited by bittersweet memories of a lost paradise, where everything was possible and nothing was missing. It’s overwhelming and luminous. It took three artists as intrepid as they are sensitive to venture into such territory.

The trio’s debut album will be released on Flak Records (PIAS distribution) in May/June.