Violin
Renaud Crols attended the Royal Conservatory of Liège in his native Belgium, completing his formal studies with the First Prize in violin, in chamber music and in music theory. He finished his less formal studies with a deep and enduring love of jazz improvisation.
As a young adult and budding pro musician he moved to Brussels and dove deep into gypsy music: the eastern, folkloric varieties from Romania and the Balkans, and also that mash-up of American jazz and Gypsy genius we call jazz manouche. During that period he enjoyed the opportunity to perform several times with the famous Romanian Gypsy orchestra, “Taraf de Haïdouks”.
Some years later and a world of music away he toured Canada with the Belgian sitar player Bert Cornelis and internationally renowned Indian tabla master, Partha Mukherjee. He also went on a world tour with the ballet, “Pitié,” of Belgian choreographer Alain Platel.
Today, Renaud performs with a variety of classical or jazz ensembles on both violin and piano, including one of Django in June’s featured ensembles this year, Les Violons de Bruxelles.
If you’ve never seen Renaud on piano, you might enjoy this turn he took with Duved Dunayevsky in the course of preparing for a Transatlantic 5 recording a few years back. Rose Room.
Renaud Crols is among the many fine artists featured on Denis Chang’s DC Music School. Here’s a snippet from one of his lessons there playing an etude over the changes of Minor Swing.