Le Palace
Place Jules Mansart 17-18
7100 La Louviere
Belgium
Nathan Daems is a multi-instrumentalist, playing mainly saxophones and flutes (ney, kaval, washint, western classical flute). He has a love of gypsy music from the Balkan region and Turkey, jittery Ska or Indian classical music, Ethio jazz as well as full-blooded jazz. It thus comes as no surprise that Daems can be found in a variety of bands such as Bazaar d’Orient, Black Flower, Ragini Trio, Mafiasko Taxi and the Antwerp Gipsy Ska Orkestra.
He won in 2010 the Young Jazz Talent competition during the Ghent Jazz Festival with his Nathan Daems Quintet, resulting in the release of the album “Praten dialect”. In 2013 he founded Ragini Trio with the Italian double bass player Marco Bardoscia and Lander Gyselinck on drums. The three young musicians tore the boundaries of jazz and Indian rag on the album “Ragini”. The name is derived from a similar electronic instrument that produces a kind of sitar-like sound, which gives the music an invasive and almost meditative test. However, whoever thinks of esoteric muzak immediately is wrong. Ragini Trio surprised with fast soles, ingenious compositions and arrangements, interchanged with exciting collective improvisations. Daems’ other band Black Flower plays music inspired by Ethiopian jazz (eg Mulatu Astatke or Mahmoud Ahmed). Black Flower released its debut album “Abyssinia Afterlife” in 2014. The album ended up in 87th place in the World Music Charts Europe 2014. On top, Daems also founded the Nathan Daems Karsilama Quintet, which plays Turkish Roma music. He was one of the musicians who composed the soundtrack of the “Thank God it’s Friday” documentary by Jan Beddegenoodts and Niel Iwens. In 2015, he composed the soundtrack of the Palestinian film “Love, Theft and Other Entanglements”, directed by Muayad Alayan and presented at the Berlinale in February 2015. Daem’s next band is called Collective N Trance, a combination of ancient sufi rhythms with jazz and afro-Brazilian percussion.