Teis Semey Quintet

The Teis Semey Quintet reimagines contemporary jazz as a grounded, corporeal and alive experience.

Guitarist and composer Teis Semey is no stranger to inJazz, and we are very pleased to have him with his own quintet in this year’s programme. Teis describes the music that he wrote for the quintet as ‘representing the New Nordic in synergy with guitar-fueled contemporary indie-jazz’. His varied and versatile bunch of musical compatriots, each of them active in and around the Amsterdam jazz scene, join in vivid interplay which betrays a friendship of many years.

During the pandemic Teis – who is Danish – got stuck in Sweden for a while, where he spent months in front of the piano with his late grandmother’s old psalm book. Teis: ‘I finally discovered some of my roots in Scandinavian music, that I have always rejected (maybe feared?). At the same time I dealt with a strong sense of loneliness and very tangled up romantic journeys. The band and our music together reflect a sense of belonging that I (and I feel, all of us) deeply needed, and this struggle concentrated our sound.’

Teis Semey – guitar
Alistair Payne – trumpet
José Soares – alto saxophone
Jort Terwijn – double bass
Sun-Mi Hong – drums