Margaux Vranken

After a year at the prestigious Berklee Global Jazz Institute (Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, Dave Liebman, Terri Lynn Carrington, Joe Lovano, Anat Cohen), pianist Margaux Vranken is releasing her first album as a leader, with the help of her artistic director Diederik Wissels. “Purpose” is a patchwork of 10 tracks that unveil rich and varied universes. Accompanied by a string quartet (Ansonia Quartet) on half of the album, Margaux navigates through musical styles with ease: you can enjoy the sweetness of «The Ending of the Book», a hymn to the future-, the fervor of «What A Day», an ode to love-, the freshness of «Purpose», celebrating music-, or the intimate atmosphere of «Sorrow». Margaux also likes to improvise: “The Ancient Times of an Unknown City” is influenced by the music of Tigran Hamasyan, «Compo 140» is a powerful tune that features Lior Tzemach (guitar) and Nathan Reising (alto sax), «Uplifiting» is a challenging but fun odd-meter song, «Fuga in F minor» is a tribute to Baroque music, «Nostalgia» is a ballad where you can discover all the sensitivity and creativity of Farayi Malek (voice) and Lihi Haruvi (soprano sax), and «Opening» is a sweet conversation between the string quartet, the rhythm section (Aaron Holthus, bass, Sebastian Kudszinchsky, drums) and Ron Warburg (trumpet).