Declan Forde (*1992 Glasgow, Scotland) is a pianist and improvising musician living in Berlin since 2014. Forde is active across a spectrum of musical situations; in duo with Greg Cohen (Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, etc.) since 2016; original music with James Banner’s Usine; traditional Jazz and freely improvised music in ever changing combinations with musicians living locally and internationally such as Han Bennink, Tony Malaby, Tobias Delius, Jeff Williams and many more.
Since 2015 Forde has been curating the concert series ‘Practically Married’ with bassist James Banner at Donau115 named ‘one of the best jazz clubs in Europe’ by The Guardian. They released their first album ‘Circus’ featuring João Lopes Pereira in October 2018, and three more recordings in March 2020. https://practicallymarried.bandcamp.com.
Practically Married + João Pereira – Ao vivo no Café Dias was released in November 2022 on Robolo records and a duo album, recorded direct to analogue tape by Guy Sternberg at Emil Berliner Studios is due for release later this year.
The guests that have performed as part of the series are João Lopes Pereira, Tobias Delius, Max Andrzejewski, Dima Bondarev, Eldar Tsalikov, Greg Cohen, Ugo Alunni, Leo Forde, Will Howard, Jordan Dinsdale, Uli Kempendorff, Rudi Mahall, Julian Erdem, Fabiana Striffler, Matthew Herd, Fermín Merlo, Meschiya Lake, Pedro Spallati, Jeff Williams, Richard Koch, Igor Spallati, Liron Yariv, Sofia Borges, Nick Dunston, Evi Filippou, Mia Dyberg, Percy Pursglove, Sofía Salvo, Lukas Akintaya, Birgitta Flick, Leo Gerstner, Megan Jowett, Sophie Prins, Arne Braun, Andrea Parkins, Weston Olencki, Camilla Nebbia and Tony Malaby.
Forde performs regularly as a soloist and was invited by the Berliner Festspiele to perform as part of American artist Rashid Johnson’s installation ‘Antoine’s Organ‘ at Berlin’s Gropius Bau July-December 2019.
Beyond the world of Jazz and improvised music, Forde has performed, toured and recorded for over ten years with the Scottish singer and artist Rachel Sermanni. He plays piano on her first release ‘The Bothy Sessions’ (2011), ‘So it Turns’ (2019) and ‘Dreamer Awake’ (2023).