Philippe Aerts

Philippe Aerts ( born June 21, 1964) is a Belgian jazz bassist.

Aerts played with eleven years of guitar and bass guitar and learned the age of fourteen double bass, which he received from his father, an amateur bass player. Just a year later he was playing with Dixieland bands. Jazz, he learned mainly from records like those of Ray Brown. For contemporary modern jazz he came through contacts with musicians such as Charles Loos and Diederik Wissel. Since then, he is in Belgium and internationally a busy bassist. He played at the North Sea Jazz Festival and toured with the quartet of Rick Hollander, the trio of Philip Catherine, with the quartet of Richard Galliano and Gary Burton and Charlie Mariano. He also played among others with Chet Baker, Lee Konitz, Mal Waldron, Nathalie Loriers and Bob Brookmeyer.

In 1997 he moved to New York where he played with the big band of Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin ( the " Birdland (jazz club) ," on tour, for example, at the Monterey Jazz Festival), and in a trio both played in New York he also with Nicholas Payton, Tom Harrell and Helen Merrill. From 2000, he lived for some years in Switzerland. Currently (2007) he plays in his own trio ( album " Cat Walk " in 1995, his first as a leader ) and quartet (Album "Back to the old world " in 2002 with Bert Joris and saxophonist John Ruocco ), with the quartet of Bert Joris, the Ivan Paduart and the trio of Philip Catherine. His trio includes John Ruocco and drummer Tony Levin.

He teaches jazz at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven and since 2010 at the Conservatorium Maastricht.

In 2002 he received the Django d' Or ( Belgium) as " Established Musicians ".