LETTERS FROM TOOTS with Ella Michiels, Rutger Mathys, Max Wyckaert and Wido Uvin

Baron Jean Toots Thielemans can rightly and reasonably be called the greatest Belgian jazz musician ever. He played in the most beautiful halls all over the world together with superstars like Sting, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, but also with jazz heroes such as Bill Evans, Charlie Parker, or Benny Goodman. And what do you do with all those stories from the furthest corners of the globe? You share them via letters. Aan Toots’ wife Huguette, his buddy Quincy Jones, and even Barack Obama. Let letters be the specialty of Ella Michiels and Wido Uvin. As a radio voice, presenter, and theater maker, Ella is on stage more than a hundred times a year to share her love for the word with everyone who wants to hear it. This is how she joined forces with guitarist Wido Uvin, with whom she made two successful performances: “Brieven aan mijn lieven” (Letters to my loves) and “Brieven van Beethoven”. When harmonica player Rutger Mathys got wind of this, he immediately had to think of the anecdote in which Toots wrote postcards full of his adventures from America and far beyond. Rutger is Twintiger van Klara this year and a multiple prize winner of, among others, the Dinant Jazz Contest and the Toots Challenge, through which he got to know Toots’ management and family. Besides his love for Toots and jazz, he also shares the love for theater with Ella and Wido. The puzzle was too simple not to put together and so the “Brieven van Toots” project quickly took shape. The story is written in the stars and that is also what Michaël Robberechts van Radio 1 thinks, who is on stage as well. He interviewed numerous musicians about the man he also knew well himself - Toots. Met Michaël added, the quartet is complete to dive into the world and correspondence of the legend who left us in 2016 with a treasure of music... and a mountain of letters.