B-Classic - 18.04.2021 Writer Mona Thijs and trumpet player Bert Joris

‘Youth is the only thing worth having’ (Oscar Wilde)
‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ (Simone De Beauvoir)

During the last Elevenoclockmass of the season, Mona Thijs shares what it means to be a young woman in 2021. Mona Thijs (1999) studies diction at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp. Since childhood, she has always seen days as little stories. Those stories sometimes make their way onto paper and sometimes onto shelves. Mona has written columns for dS Magazine and Klasse. One of her short stories was published in the magazine DW B. In the summer of 2019, she was given a writer's residency with deBuren in Paris. She enjoys performing her own cabaret shows on stage. In Maandagavond on Tour by the theatre company De Nwe Tijd, she took a closer look at her love life. Mona is the young, feminine and extremely talented icing on the cake of the Elevenoclockmass.

Trumpet player and composer Bert Joris, cut from a slightly older cloth, is one of Europe’s most talented and versatile jazz musicians. In terms of international renown, he ranks among the likes of Toots Thielemans and Phillipe Catherine. Bert Joris is the house composer for the Brussels Jazz Orchestra and is an acclaimed composer and arranger. He is a master of giving a simple melody the complexity it needs to become fresh and captivating. In 2010 he won the Flemish Culture Prize for best musician and in 2012 the Royal Conservatory Antwerp foundation awarded him with a maestro honoris causa. A great man sharing the stage with an equally great woman.

For the last time we will be welcomed, thanked, and blessed by Rashif El Kaoui, with musical accompaniment by the renowned B-Classic Eleven O’ Clock Mass Trio.