Biography

Formed in 2004, the Benoit Martiny Band's roots are in the dusty garage of its leader's house, in the small Luxemburgish village of Rameldange. Through the years, drummer Benoit Martiny developed with his bandmates an original musical style influenced by the mid-1960s.

The Benoît Martiny Band was First Prize Winner of the 2008 Amersfoort Jazz Talent Award, and has been performing in many different venues in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Hungary, France, Belgium, and Italy.

Powered by the internationally recognized musical talents of clarinetist Michel Pilz, saxophonist Roby Glod and keyboardist Leon den Engelsen, The Grand Cosmic Journey extends the Benoit Martiny Band experience back to this period when free jazz gave birth to krautrock. The project is an attempt to revisit these golden years where music broke the boundaries of art and cultures, where music was imagined by some of the most innovative composers and sound designers of these last decades, such as Sun Ra, Charles Mingus, Jimi Hendrix, Hermeto Pascoal, and Frank Zappa.