KANZE

Born and raised in Paris by an Italian mother and German-American father, Alex Kanze grew up in a multicultural and multilingual household where wax ruled. His father played Jazz records from artists like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk as well as classical music such as Bach, Stravinsky, Chopin, Debussy and George Gershwin. His mother introduced him toRock’n’Roll, Funk, Soul, R&B and Disco with James Brown, The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, The Bee Gees, ABBA and Gloria Gaynor. Alex also became fully fluent in French, Italian, German and English by the age of 8 and learned Spanish later at 16. His parents noticed that Alex developed a precise ear for music, tone, language and pronunciation because of his upbringing.Therefore they were quick to enroll him in classical piano and guitar lessons at a very young age.Despite his parents’ push to develop a musical education, Alex joined a fine arts school in the heart of Paris but continued his music lessons. At 16 one of his guitar teachers introduced him to Gypsy Jazz and Alex quickly started to perform and adore the energetic jazz genre. During his early teens, Alex would often bring his guitar to the Palais de Tokyo or Les Quais de Jussieux where he would meet up and make friends with people from Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, and Mali..Together, they would blend the guitar, djembe, darbuka and didgeridoo to substitute the bass and played to random crowds from sunset to sunrise. In 2009 at the age of 18, Alex left Paris on his own to move to NYC without knowing any friends, connections or relatives there.He strongly believed that the world was beautiful because of its diversity and wanted to be in a city even more international than Paris to pursue his creative aspirations. He initially missed Paris but didn’t regret his decision and found solace in playing French Gypsy jazz first in places like the Washington Square Park, Tompkins Square Park or Union Square like he used to back in Paris. He rapidly moved upwards to play at places such as Fadas, the Keep, and Radegast. In 2011 Alex moved from Crown Heights to Bushwick where he was introduced to new cultures and sounds such asPuerto Rican Salsa, Mexican Cumbia and Dominican Bachata. The influence from salsa and 70s West African music persuaded him to pick up the trumpet around 2014.During that time, Alex met some of the founders of NYC’s underground minimal techno and house scene, most notably Resolute where he started to learn about electronic music and DJing.For a while Alex would play Gypsy Jazz guitar or trumpet jazz at cafes in the evening and at night, DJ at clubs and warehouses.However, he realized he wanted to have the endurance and energy a DJ could bring but still have the musical and melodic interaction with the crowd that he felt from came from playing instruments. From 2023 onwards, Alex solely played live using synthesizers and Octatrack samplers to record and loop his trumpet live with pre-recorded piano and percussion from his studio and started to blend electronic drums and beats with Latin and Afro percussion andmelodic jazz trumpet. He now plays regularly in various venues in NYC such as Keybar, Moondog, H0l0, Apollo Studio, where he fully improvises and plays anything and everything he came across during his lifelong musical journey.

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