Belgium
Bert Dockx, guitar; Nicolas Rombouts, bass; Frans Van Isacker, alto saxophone; Thomas Jillings, tenor saxophone, clarinet; Louis Evrard, drums; Yannick Dupont, drums, synthesizer
Ottla is the new band of the sedulous singer, songwriter and guitarist Bert Dockx (Flying Horseman, Dans Dans). What started as a modest thought, an ambiguous plan to start playing jazz again, spiralled into an idiosyncratic project with its very own identity. It became Ottla, Franz Kafka’s beloved sister’s surname, after whom the young Dockx once christened a bicycle, and later his first band. Now, once again, Ottla is a band. And it’s a new and different kind of beast; a unique hybrid of musical moods and styles. Certainly not a casual exercise, but a very downright, vital sextet which was shaped and moulded under the watchful eye of its instigator, after a yearlong of blowing and kicking up dust in the rehearsal room.
**Park and www.ljubljanajazz.si, Jazz Festival Ljubljana FB, Cankarjev dom YouTube channel