een mooi pak (2007, demisluktezigeuner bv), was recorded with an orchestra of ten, the outcome of the Yoors’project, that toured belgium, slovenija, hrovatija, serbia, hungary en holland.

Jan Yoors (Antwerpen 1922- New York 1978), painter, photographer and writer, at the age of twelve joined a group of gypsies and travelled with them all over Europe. In Crossing (1977) and in The Gypsies (1967) he sketches life with his kumpania. During world war two he served as a 'liaison' between Roma and organized resistance. In 1943 he was captured by the Gestapo and sentenced to death. He was released by mistake and managed to escape. Many of his Roma family didn't. After the war he lived and worked in London first, in New York later. Two wives gave him three children. Kore Yoors takes care of his artistic legacy. Yoors' The Heroic Present was published only recently (monacelli press, 2004). Check www.janyoors.com.

We chose fragments from Crossing and The Gypsies that struck us as beautiful. All appeared to be about life and death: the (im-)possibilities of freedom; the fear to live life, as opposed to the will to live, love, eat and spend at least a million... Inspired by Yoors we formed óur version of an orchestra for weddings, funerals, births and escapes. Every now and then we managed to assemble (from Bruxelles, Amsterdam, Zagreb, Amsterdam, Groningen, Moskou and Den Andel) to take a few days to write, (hardly) rehearse, travel and play...

Over the period we met and left and met again, óur kumpania lived through a marriage (in Italy!), the birth of children, the raising of the ones already there. There was love, also in the face of danger (which is the only true heroism, according to Pulika), there was legendary good food (Iva's boargoulash in Ljubljana, Henry's fish in Groningen, and who would not remember gospodjo Seljak's soup and pastrmka, near Kostanjevica...) There was little money earned and a fortune spent.
And, there was my grief over the unexpected loss of my brother.
Nevertheless we travelled. From Budapest to Petersburg, from Leeuwarden to Sezana music was made and a closed fist opened up again.