Le Trio Perdu

• More than words
• Who are we
• Jokke Schreurs
• Chris Mentens
• Kevin Constant Simon Van Staeyen

More than words

Start all over again

Who are we

Do you know what you are?
You are what you is
You is what you am
You ain’t what you’re not
So see what you got
You are what you is
An’ that’s all it ’tis

Le Trio Perdu is an extremely versatile band playing music from an era not limiting ourselves to a single genre. We specialize in early Klezmer and Gypsy Swing.

I am Kevin Van Staeyen Violinist, singer  and founder. I have  a passion for true musicianship. I only like recordings with emotional content and even more so if it sounds rough. I don’t like polished things. I don’t like the myriad of modern recordings with their tuned voices, computerized beats, quantized, limited, gauged and whatever else it is they do to  this modern atrocity they call music. Yes I am very sorry but I have a physical aversion to over produced modern music.

There are of course countless modern recordings I do like. From Jazz to eastern European bands, I will even go as far as to like the occasional singer songwriter ! But people who know me will undoubtedly confirm that my music library is filled with old recordings from a time where tampering was virtually impossible.

With this in mind you have to come listen to a Le Trio Perdu concert. You will either love or hate us. There is no middle ground. We play with 2 to 4 (depending on the budget of the organizer) musicians. We are all extremely proficient musicians and performers yet our style is somewhat different. Maybe because our background is so different.

Start all over again

Musicians :

Jokke Schreurs

our lead guitarist is a true blood. He studies several hours a day (if he does not he is in a terribly foul mood let me tell you) he knows over a thousand songs by heart and  has that heart in the right place. He has played with more bands than even you can possibly imagine. Thanks to Jokke we have many a young guitarist in our audience these days. Jokke also attracts flocks of middle aged women which might even be better because they tend to have more money. Jokke also has a degree in Psychology and is an amateur ornithologist. I love to have him in the band because he has something useful to say about nearly every Django Reinhardt song ever recorded.

If you would like to know more about Jokke, too bad. I will put a dedicated page up for all our musicians but you will have to wait.

Start all over again

Chris Mentens

The erudite of the band. Chris has a real passion for Jazz. He can’t fit his entire collection of music on any single mp3 player currently on the market. Imagine you went to your basement to get yourself your last bottle of chateau Migraine 1992 and you accidentally opened a cupboard that hasn’t been opened in decades. Imagine for some reason you never remember after you did that, you take out all that dusty stuff you stacked in there when Madonna was still hot and the cure was not associated with some strange African disease… In that cupboard you find an old vinyl record you haven’t played it in god only knows how many years. Well if that very record had jazz music on it, I bet you Chris would know when it was recorded, where and he might even know just exactly what the saxophone player was drinking right before he played that wonderful solo on the second track at exactly 4 minutes and 31 seconds.

I will also make a dedicated page for Chris, but first let me finish the bare bones of this site!

Start all over again

Kevin Contant Simon Van Staeyen

What people usually do is write websites in third person singular. It makes -for some obscure reason- writing about yourself much easier. I agree, but since I don’t like polished music filled with electronics and marketing tricks I feel I should just be honest with you and write about myself as myself. I know I am a very good violinist I just hate saying it because there will always a million guys or girls better than me. But I can’t help it, I just love my fiddle. I started playing when I was 3 years old. I loved it then I still do. I try to find that true old-style sound that the old masters had between the two great wars. This blog dash site will talk a lot about fiddle techniques and great finds I did while searching for that sound. Again, more about me later when the rest is finished. I love being narcissistic, but duty comes first So here I am the founder of the band and the creator of the website and vise versa. Please and I beg of you, please write comments, even nasty ones if you must. Help me turn this site into a living, breeding platform with lyrics, scores, music and other goodies.

Start all over again