Wolter Wierbos Solo
“..the great, subtle, razor-eared, sometimes comic trombonist… he can nail difficult written music, pitch-perfect, and also play a quarter tone off, with greasy vibrato like an inspired rural brass-band amateur.”
John Corbett, Downbeat
“..a total player, with outrageous facility and an inquiring mind……”
Coda Magazine
Biography
Wolter Wierbos has played throughout Europe, Canada, USA and Asia. Like many Dutch brass players Wierbos started out in a ‘fanfare’ (brass band), switching from trumpet to trombone when he was 17. “It looked good, and the trombones walk in front…” His interests range from precise chamber jazz to throbbing post punk and contemporary composed and improvised music. Described as “a phenomenon, both a humorous importer of every style into his template-free, fat-backed sound, and a tireless spy in the house of brass”, he is equally at home using the classic trombone vocabulary or enthusiastically giving a round-trip tour of his horn, from buzzing mute mutations and grizzly blurts to purring multiphonics. He is also a very good instant composer, good at keeping it moving and not taking it too seriously.
Reviews
“There isn’t much Dutch trombonist Wolter Wierbos can’t do…”
Kevin Whitehead, Coda Magazine
“He speaks the classic trombone vocabulary as naturally as he does Dutch, mixing throaty growls, fat smears, elegant slinkiness, and impeccable wah-wahs like some long-lost Ellington sideman, but he’s just as adept when he gets abstract.”
Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
“He can be a capricious sound researcher – listen to I Can’t Dance – but can also play with emotional lyricism. The additional track ‘dOeK’, recorded twenty years later, displays the strongly developed sense of form of a fully mature artist.”
Jacob Haagsma
