Marc Danval

Marc Danval
Born Marc Sevenants
(1937-02-18) February 18, 1937
Ixelles
Occupation Journalist, Author

Marc Danval pseudonym of Marc Sevenants (Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, 18 February 1937) is a journalist, author, artist and columnist about Belgian food and jazz. In his early career he also worked as an actor.

Biography

Born Marc Sevenants, Marc Danval is respectively the son and the grandson of the pianists, composers and teachers at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Fernand (1901-1992) and José Sevenants (1868-1946). After beginning his career as an actor in the late 1950s, he changed his name to the stage name Danval - a reference to his mother Marthe Danvoie's maiden name - in order to avoid confusion with his cousin, Maurice Sevenants, who was also interested in becoming actor. Danval performed in many Brussels theatres, including the Théâtre royal du Parc and the Théâtre royal des Galeries before ending his career in 1961.

During those same years, Danval also started working as a jazz columnist. He began his radio career during his military service in 1958, presenting several special broadcasts for troops. In the 1960s he began presenting jazz programmes at RTBF (Belgian Radio and Television) and Radio Luxembourg. Today he is best known as the producer and host of the RTBF program La troisième oreille [1] which presents rare 78, 45 and 33 rpm recordings. He also works as journalist in the specialized and general press,[2] and regularly hosts jazz concerts in Belgium and abroad.

Besides his regular columns, Marc Danval is the author of poetry (Parmi moi seul, a performance called Les poètes du jazz), biographies of Sacha Guitry, Robert Goffin and Toots Thielemans, and articles for the Dictionnaire du jazz à Bruxelles et en Wallonie.

During his career, Danval’s reputation in the jazz world allowed him to meet renowned musicians including Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Chet Baker. These encounters are evoked in his poetry collection Parmi moi seul.

In 2006 the Société belge des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs (SABAM) awarded Danval the “Django d’Or” for his leading role in Belgium’s jazz scene.

Marc Danval Collection [3]

Over the course of his career, Marc Danval developed a large collection of recordings, particularly rich in Belgian jazz.[4]

In 2010, thanks to the support of the Friends of the Royal Library of Belgium, the Music Division of the Royal Library of Belgium acquired the collection. The acquisition was an important development for the Music Division and a considerable enrichment of its collections of non-classical music.[5]

The Danval Collection holds 12,000 78, 45 and 33 RPM recordings ranging from jazz, to folk music, to French and Anglo-Saxon popular song, film music, and variety shows. It also contains some 2,000 illustrated scores from the late 19th century to the 1950s, some of which feature artworks signed by Magritte, De Greef, Henri-Valéry Vander Poorten and Jean-Dominique Van Caulaert. The Danval collection also holds over 800 works on music, 3,000 photographs (most of them signed) and 500 posters.

Bibliography

Prizes awarded


References

  1. ↑ This broadcasting replaced 25, 50, 75 of Nicolas Dor in 1998
  2. ↑ Particularly in Les cahiers du jazz, magazine established in 1959 by Frank Ténot and Lucien Malson
  3. ↑ Fonds Marc Danval on the Music Division's website of the Royal Library of Belgium http://www.kbr.be/nl/fonds-marc-danval
  4. ↑ He acquired his first 78 RPM recording at the age of nine. It was a cover of Boogie Woogie by Pinetop Smith and of Rempart du Sud by Ray Bauduc and Bob Haggart performed by Stan Brenders, a striking figure of Belgian jazz and jazz band leader of INR (Institut National de Radiodiffusion).
  5. ↑ Cornaz M., "Le fonds Marc Danval: une source hors du commun pour l'étude de la vie musicale à Bruxelles" (The Marc Danval Collection: an unusual source for studying the musical life in Brussels), in Brusselse cahiers : Tijdschrift van de Stad Brussel = Cahiers Bruxellois: Revue d'histoire urbaine (Urban history review), XLV, Brussels, The Archives of the city of Brussels, 2013, p. 85-96. Downloadable on Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/22042162/Le_fonds_Marc_Danval_une_source_hors_du_commun_pour_létude_de_la_vie_musicale_à_Bruxelles
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