DANIËL TOMÀS

Have you ever stood still in a field that used to be forest? Have you ever looked at a river and wondered what swam there before you were born? That quiet ache when you realise the landscape you love is a faded photograph of what it once was — and no one told you? This is the essence Daniël Tomàs captures in his music.

Daniël Tomàs (1995), known as ’the piano virtuoso who plays in socks’ — because his legs don’t fit under the piano, has been playing the piano since he was three years old. His music lets you forget the past, present, and future.

In 2025, Tomàs began releasing Ecopathy, a three-part album series exploring humanity’s relationship with ecological loss. The word merges ecology and pathos: the suffering of the earth. Inspired by Marc Argeloo’s book Natuuramnesie, which revealed a forgotten Dutch landscape of calving whales in the Wadden Sea and skies black with birds, Tomàs set out to give this unnamed grief a sound. Blending elements of improvisation, electronica, and classical piano with digitally distorted textures through granular synthesis, the albums create a sonic world somewhere between memory and mourning.

The trilogy unfolds in three chapters:

• Ecopathy I — Forgetting (2025): What we’ve lost through increasing urbanisation — an amnesia of nature.
• Ecopathy II — Finding (2027): The emotional impact of confronting changing environments.
• Ecopathy III — Feeling (2028): How to process ecological grief and find a place for it.

Tomàs is not just a pianist; he is a composer and producer whose work always centres around a narrative. His music arises from specific themes, inviting listeners into a world where they can close their eyes and dream within the story. This approach results in concept albums that are deeply introspective and emotional.

Tomàs’s dedication to storytelling is also evident in his work with the Doppler Trio, creating albums about the birth of a fictional planet. He improvises with saxophonist Loek van den Berg and premiered compositions based on the Epic of Gilgamesh at a sold-out LUX in Nijmegen in late 2022. He has toured Europe with Maltese singer-songwriter Alexandra Alden and is the pianist for the theatre performances of Pepijn Gunneweg.

With Ecopathy however, Tomàs ventures beyond introspection into something collective. We don’t have funerals for extinct animal species. No monument for the Black-tailed Godwit that has declined by 80% in fifty years. Ecopathy creates that missing space; a place where ecological grief is not dismissed but heard, felt, and shared through music.

Live, Ecopathy is an invitation to listen differently. Each performance weaves the pieces together in a unique way, layering acoustic piano with electronic textures that evoke both the beauty and the erosion of the natural world. A tapestry of sound that asks the audience not just to wander through their own thoughts, but to remember what the world sounded like before we stopped listening.