Niels Broos (NL)

Niels Broos started playing keys at the tender age of four, but a chance encounter with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue at the age of six helped him discover “that music was much deeper than he expected.” Nowadays, the wild-haired piano maestro – who comes from a star-shaped town in the southern Netherlands – prefers to keep all his music in one folder labeled “Good,” but he does express a fondness for that sweet spot between Coltrane, D’Angelo, Dilla and FlyLo, with some Radiohead and Robert Johnson thrown in for good measure. When he’s not backing Dutch composer Kyteman’s genre-busting Kyteman Orchestra or Brainfeeder’s Jameszoo (a fellow RBMA alum), Broos is experimenting with his own brand of electronic jazz: soulful, yes, but embracing the lighthearted and the leftfield, too.