Kris Defoort

Kris Defoort is a Belgian avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. He is the brother of the famous Wim “Dj Willie”, “the living pop encyclopedia” Defoort, Belgian saxophonist Bart Defoort and Koen Defoort. Early life Kris Defoort was born in Bruges, Belgium. His brother is saxophonist and composer Bart Defoort. In 1978, he entered the conservatory in Antwerp to study early music and recorder. He graduated four years later, and then decided to study contemporary music and jazz at the Liège conservatory. Frederic Rzewski, Henri Pousseur and Garrett List were among his teachers. He also teaches at the Brussels conservatory. Opera and music-theatre In 1998, Defoort became a composer-in-residence at LOD, a production company specialising in contemporary music theatre in Ghent. His first work for them was the dance piece Passages with Fatou Traoré, premiered in 2001. His first opera, created in collaboration with director Guy Cassiers was The Woman Who Walked into Doors, after the novel of the same name by Roddy Doyle. It premiered in November 2001 at deSingel in Ghent, before a very successful tour of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Musica fe