Tectonics 2022 Artist Profile
Kaja Draksler (1987) is a Slovenian pianist and composer.
After her studies in the Netherlands (BA in jazz piano and MA in classical composition), she decided to stay in Amsterdam, where she became an active member of the improvisors scene, performing extensively all over the Europe. Her main project is her Amsterdam-based Octet, which she formed in 2016. Besides her frequent solo concerts, she has been working internationally over the past years with trio Punkt.Vrt.Plastik, quartet Hearth, and in duets with Terrie Ex, Susana Santos Silva, Eve Risser (To Pianos), Onno Govaert (Feecho) and Szymon G膮siorek (Czajka & Puchacz). She is one of the founding members of theinterdisciplinary group I/O and part of the internationally acclaimed Doek collective.
As a composer she has been commissioned by various international groups, ranging from vocal and chamber ensembles to big bands and
orchestras.
Kaja is interested in finding ways to merge the composition and (free) improvisation by working with different structures and musical logics. In the spirit of the Dutch jazz/improvised music legacy, she is drawn to the idea of erasing the stylistic and historical musical borders, and discovering personal expression and language through composition and improvisation.
Draksler & Santos
Of Slovenian origin, but based now in Copenhagen, Draksler combines classical and jazz motifs, elements from the traditional music of her country and the study of the inner structures of Cecil Taylor’s improvisations. She is a captivating and adventurous player, brimming with ideas and as exciting to behold for the nuances of detail in her playing as for her strong feeling for rhythm. Active in both the mainstream and the avant-garde scenes in Porto and Stockholm, trumpeter Susana Santos Silva brings to this duo, in a more intimate context, everything she has been known for in her many other projects, namely, her warm, tightly focused, lyrical and yet highly geometrical style. To those who have followed these two musicians in the various configurations in which they have performed, there was probably a certain inevitability to their coming together as a duo, which has finally happened after musicians collaborated for about 10 years in different constellations.
Their music is released on a Clean Feed album This Love, a document of creativity at its highest level, capturing the duo communing back and forth between composition and improvisation, the flow so organic that one could be forgiven for forgetting that it takes musicians of exceptional ability, sensitivity and inventiveness to make music like this sound so effortlessly natural.
