KammerJazz
Igor Gehenot New Quintett (B/I)
Igor Gehenot · piano
Steven Delannoye · saxophone
Jean-Paul Estiévenart - trumpet
Sal La Rocca · double bass
Umberto Odone · drums
Born in 1989 in Liège, Igor Gehenot began classical piano lessons at an early age. At home, he grew up with Bach and Stravinsky, as his mother was a pianist. By the age of 13, he joined the jazz department at the Royal Academy of Liège. At fourteen, he turned to Boogie-Woogie, attempted his first improvisations, but also had a great ear for funk and hip-hop.
In 2007, at the age of 17, he founded the Metropolitan Quartet, quickly making a name for himself in Belgium and winning the "Young Talent Award" at the Comblain-La-Tour Festival. At 19, he moved to the Conservatorium Maastricht.
Starting in 2009, he attended the Brussels Conservatory, where he studied Modern Jazz. At this point, he already had his first trio and performed at various festivals and clubs in Benelux. The Brussels jazz clubs "The Sounds" and later "Archiduc" offered the trio residences for over two years. This allowed him to play with international jazz musicians and gain experience.
At 21, he received the "Sabam Jeunesses Musicales Jazz Award" and recorded his first album "Road Story" with his trio. The album was a great success with audiences, critics, and media, and was awarded as Jazz Album of the Year in the British jazz magazine "Jazzwise."
In 2014, he recorded his second album "Motion" with his trio, which again received several international awards. In 2014, Igor Gehenot was named "Belgian Jazz artist of 2014."
2016 was another year filled with diverse activities. Among other things, he added a strong hip-hop sound to his famous concert at Brussels' Grand-Place.
In 2017, Igor Gehenot returned to acoustic jazz with his quartet DELTA. With French trumpeter Alex Tassel, Swedish double bassist Viktor Nyberg, and Luxembourgish drummer Jérôme Klein, this quartet was invited to major festivals.
JazzWise magazine wrote about Igor Gehenot: "It only takes a few bars of 'Promenade', the opening piece of the debut album 'Road Story', to realize that he is a rare talent that will surely be among the great names of jazz in years to come. His touch, his articulation, his harmonic sense, his ideas, and his perfectly balanced sense of timing are talents of a magnitude that may occur once in a generation."
Igor Gehenot is active as a sideman in various bands. He has a piano duo with pianist Amaury Faye and leads the funk band NØ Steam.
Last year, Igor Gehenot assembled his New Quintet in the traditional quintet format with excellent musicians from the Belgian jazz scene.