After spending several years working with singer-songwriters, jazz players and improvisers, co-writing songs in different languages and pondering the meaning of either writing or improvising music, Marco Giongrandi - Sardinian by roots, a Milanese by birth, and a “Brusseleir” by choice - has now started a new project about his own songs. They're in English, they're about what he loves and fights and they might have a touch of Nick Drake, Julia Holter, Daniel Rossen. Alongside Marco, you’ll find Hendrik Lasure, Casper Van De Velde, Soet Kempeneer, one or two guitars, a banjo sometimes, a piano, some synths, a bass, drums, some bells.
Marco Giongrandi, a jazz graduate of the conservatories of Brussels and Milan, is a guitarist and banjoist in various international bands: Hendrik Lasure Warm Bad, Dear Uncle Lennie, Martha Moore, Kettle of Kites, ANK among others. 


The album ‘When Birds Call in the Darkness’ is composed of eight songs. Each tune represents a story as well as a landscape. The birds, the sea, the mountains, the clouds, home, the apartment of an unknown lover, and again, leaves, drawings, the wind, a poured tea, some doors and a book become both frames and main characters of the album. Within and together with these frames, stories of ordinary life and relationships unfold. Each song starts with a dialogue, whether with another person or the narrator itself, and sometimes develops into raising questions about broader themes. As for the stories, the music was conceived to be as simple and acoustic as possible, recorded with four instruments in the same room. It has then found its way to match the inherent complexity of ordinary life and those natural landscapes that dwell between day and night : 'When Birds Call in the Darkness’. 

Lúcia Merzenich Pires is a Brussels-based flutist whose work is rooted mainly in jazz and improvised music. After studying classical flute throughout her teenage years, she turned to jazz and continued her training at the Brussels Conservatory. Her artistic focus lies in the intersection of complex rhythms, free improvisation, and, more recently, live electronics. She is currently active in a range of projects across different genres while developing her own improvisational language. For this event, she will present a new solo where she'll bring together her diverse influences.