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Dutch pianist Michiel Braam combines exceptional virtuosity with a playful unpredictability. His infectious dynamic and percussive style is strictly his own. His unexpected, sometimes comic meanderings are never abstract or obtuse, but always rooted in the material. Braam takes you on a wild and surprising journey, but makes sure that you don't get lost. As of 2016 Michiel plays the solo program "Gloomy Sunday", including improvisation, Purcell, an occasional Antillean waltz, jazz standards such as "The Man I Love" and Braam originals like "Q16" and "Pit Stop Ball Ad". "For me, doing a solo concert doesn't involve any preparation in terms of a set-list or anything concrete about pieces I will be playing. I simply start and see where everything leads me to. At this concert, I made an exception to this custom. Not only would it be nice to play one of the many famous Hungarian compositions in Budapest, but also the very night of the concert, students of the ArtEZ University of the Arts, where I am head of Jazz & Pop, organized a concert in remembrance of our student Robin Cornelissen who had died exactly two years earlier. I had played Gloomy Sunday at his funeral and playing it in the Opus Jazz Club connected me to Robin, as well as to the great Hungarian music tradition." Michiel Braam

Track Listing

Press Quotes

A recital by Michiel Braam is like a musical journey, which pass through various styles and raids in review. So we sail after inquiring start number 'Opus Expresso' in bold blues Q11. We also listen to fascinating operations of the Billie Holiday classic standards become 'The Man I Love' and 'Gloomy Sunday'. The last song is a deeply moving obituary for his 2013 deceased student Robin Cornelissen. An implementation that hits you right in the heart. (...) Once again he proves to be one of the most original minds of the current Dutch improvised music. Someone we really would like to hear more.

     —Cyriel Pluimakers, http://jazzenzo.nl/?e=3402

On Gloomy Sunday - a continuous solo set recorded in Budapest - pianist Michiel Braam comes off as a sort of Dutch Earl Hines. That is not a comparison to make lightly, and we won't push it too far. But like Hines, he's always stood a little apart from his peers. When Hines's buddies moved on to New York in the late 1920s, Earl remained based in Chicago, under the mob's thumb. That'd be one explanation for why, even though he played a mean stride bass, Hines never sounded like one of the Harlem masters. There was always something more wayward in his timing and keyboard textures: he could step out of the stylistic frame and look back at it - like a few Dutch players to come.

     —Kevin Whitehead, Point of Departure

Gloomy Sunday is presented as a continuous 43 minute suite with Braam segueing seamlessly from free improvs that collide into originals and well-worn standards refreshingly interpreted. This contrasts to the two previous solo sets, the first of which was all improvisation and the second which interpreted compositions he'd written for large ensembles refashioned as solo pieces. Here the music unfolds in an almost stream of consciousness fashion and nothing sounds forced. Although clearly a modernist, he pays homage to the complete history of jazz piano. A delicate 'Man I Love' gradually morphs into 'Pit Stop Ball Ad' via a boogie pattern. A high-velocity 'Memories Of You' is filled with all manner of sweeps up and down the keyboard. It's a complete and very satisfying program that makes Gloomy Sunday well worth investigating. If one doesn't have any music by Braam, this could be a good place to start.

     —Robert Iannapollo, Cadence Magazine