Anita Petruescu Group - It's all layers beneath the surface

Line-up:

Anita Petruescu (RO) - voce

Miran Noh (KR) - pian

Adrian Bifano (VE) - chitara

Johannes Fend (AT) - contrabas

Laurens Buijs (NL) - tobe

Anita Petruescu is an award-winning, acclaimed singer and composer based in the Netherlands. She is a storyteller, an artist with an abiding commitment to musical honesty and throughout her creative process, boundaries between genres cease to exist. In 2017, she received the Best Female Vocalist prize at Targu-Mures Jazz Competition and she was only getting started. In 2018, she won the Best Vocal Performance prize at Johnny Raducanu International Festival and in the following year, the First Prize at New Jazz Players competition during Bucharest Jazz Festival.

Her music displays colourful vocal lines, harmonic tensions, power dynamics, unexpected twists, a distinctive, hybrid sound finding theatrical and folklore nuances. Her compositions are the manifestation of her artistic reality, and urges one to apprehend the complexity and contradiction residing in human behavior. Performed by versatile musicians, with strong artistic intentions, bound and driven by a desire for freedom, Anita’s music develops for better interaction, deeper emotional state, more awareness in a performative context.

Adrian Bifano is an Amsterdam-based guitarist from Caracas, Venezuela that is part of the up-coming generation of the Dutch jazz scene. Winner of the Erasmus Jazz Prize 2019, Adrian has performed at top festivals such as North Sea Jazz Fest, North Sea Round Town and Grachtenfestival, and has also shared the stage with established and emerging musicians such as Benjamin Herman, Stefan Lievestro and Alessandro Fongaro.

Miran Noh, a pianist with a passion for classical and jazz genres, hails from South Korea and is currently based in the Netherlands. Her musical talent has garnered recognition, including nominations for esteemed awards like the Leiden Jazz Awards 2021, Grachten Jazz Competition 2021, and the Erasmus Jazz Prize in 2021 and 2022. Notably, Miran leads the band NOHMI and has had the opportunity to perform at prominent events like So What's Next 2022, Injazz showcase, and North Sea Jazz 2023, where her performances have been warmly received by the international audiences.

Johannes Fend is a double bass player and composer from Austria. He studied Jazz and classical music in the Netherlands (BA & MA) where he still lives. He has won various awards and is very active in the European music scene. His solo debut album ‘Journey’ received high praise by many critics and he recently had his US debut with it in New York City. "Johannes Fend has a presence and technique that makes you become quiet. His carefully constructed solo’s sound like compositions. The tradition wherein he improvises is at times older than the jazz tradition, but the Austrian bassist really plays in the moment. He is above all exceptionally musical: everything he plays sounds as if all other options and possibilities were irrelevant." Eddy Determeyer, about "Johannes Fend - Solo

Laurens Buijs is a Rotterdam-based drummer who studied jazz with Mark Schilders and Joost Patocka and shared the stage with Benjamin Herman, Jesse Schilderink, John Dikeman, Stefan Lievestro and many others. Laurens constantly sees opportunity, extensive possibilities to accompany melancholic melodies or to enhance cheerfully, bouncy rhythms. His approach often leads to an intensification of the atmosphere in the compositions, playing with dynamics and speed in his search for freedom, while staying truly loyal to his role as “the time keeper”.