Henri Segers

Henri Segers (born May 20, 1921 in Brussels , † July 2, 1983 in Tervuren ) was a Belgian jazz and entertainment musician ( piano , orchestra conductor).

Live and act

Segers began playing the piano with his father, who owned a used musical instrument shop. He was soon considered a child prodigy, and his first public appearance took place at the age of seven. At the age of twelve he began classical piano studies at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. In 1938 he graduated with a first prize. Although Segers was trained for a career in classical music, he preferred jazz; Even before the German occupation of Belgium in 1940, he played the piano in several jazz orchestras such as the Moustic Hot Diggers .

During the Second World War Segers continued to work in Brussels, where he was a pianist in the jazz orchestras of Fud Candrix , Gus Deloof and Jean Omer . He also played with the orchestras of Candrix and Omer in Berlin, especially in the Delphi Palace ; he also made recordings with the orchestras of Willi Stech , Robert De Kers , Meg Tevelian and Ernst van't Hoff . Although jazz was officially suppressed by the Nazis, he found employment again in Jean Omer's orchestra until 1944, when he worked as a studio musician for a record company. In 1946 he accompanied Gus Viseur . In the same year Segers founded his own jazz band in Brussels, initially calling it L'Heure Bleue , later Henri Segers & His Belgian Stars . With this band he also performed in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia and was the house band in Omer's Brussels club Bœuf sur le Toit from the early 1950s .

In 1953 a national television service, Institut National de Radiodiffusion, was founded and television was introduced in Belgium on this basis. From the beginning, Segers' band appeared regularly on entertainment programs. Three years later, Ernest Blondeel commissioned Segers to form a large dance orchestra for the television broadcasts.

The musicians who played in Segers' television orchestra from the start were Frans Van Dyck (trombonist), Albert Caels (trumpeter), Jo Van Wetter (guitarist), Constant Letellier (clarinetist and saxophonist), Roger Vanhaverbeke (double bass) and Jo De Muynck (drummer); later Francy Boland and Etienne Verschueren also belonged to this band; in addition to the two, Jack Sels also arranged .

Between 1956 and 1965 Segers and his orchestra appeared in countless television programs. The most successful was the music show Music Parade , in which stars from Belgium and abroad played their hits accompanied by Sergers' band. He also recorded records for Philips , including the album Les airs de Paris et d'Italie (1962). For the interpretation of Verschueren's title La Suite en 16 with the soloist Fats Sadi he was awarded the Bronze Rose of Montreux in 1963 ; In the same year he was able to record a television show with his orchestra about a Fantaisie pour Ballet et Orchester in the Bavaria Studios in Munich . With his orchestra between 1960 and 1965 he also accompanied the Belgian contributions to the Grand Prix Eurovision and thus the singers Fud Leclerc (twice), Robert Cogoi , Claude Lombard , and Serge & Christine Ghisoland .

From 1965 to 1966 Segers worked as an arranger for Jean Kluger's record label World Music . In 1967 he founded an eleven-piece orchestra. From 1968 he worked as a producer for RTB. Due to marital and health problems, Segers was forced to leave RTB in the late 1970s. Seger died of cirrhosis .

Lexical entry

• Émile Henceval: Dictionnaire du jazz à Bruxelles et en Wallonie . Liège: Pierre Mardaga, 1991.

Web links

• Henri Segers at Discogs (English)
• Henri Segers at Allmusic (English)
• Henri Segers in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Conductors, 1964. Retrieved July 20, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Different, probably incorrect, date of death 1964 in Henceval.