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The new season begins

After a refreshing summer filled with festivals and fun, the new season for improvised music has now begun. Amsterdam is chock-full of great venues and improvised series – be sure to check out Present Sounds Amsterdam to get an overview of everything going on. Here are some highlights featuring Doek ensembles.

Zaal 100

Impro Jazzcafe
Zaal 100 is back with regular shows every Tuesday night including the monthly showcase for All Ellington every third Tuesday of the Month.

De Ruimte

Space is the Place, Second Stop is Jupiter, Ditdit-dada-ditdit
Space is the Place at De Ruimte has already hosted a number of great shows and will begin their collaboration with Doek November 9 featuring Cactus Truck with special guest James Brandon Lewis as well as an incredibly rare, heavily amplified bass solo by Wilbert de Joode.…

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Doek Festival 2017 part of The Present is Present

In a departure from tradition, this year’s Doek Festival will be part of a larger event, The Present Is Present, a week long festival highlighting the rich and diverse universe of creative music in Amsterdam. The scene is flourishing, with new artists, groups, venues and series popping up all over town, crossing generations, genres and boundaries and injecting new life into the city. The Present Is Present celebrates this vibrant scene. It also marks the launch of a new website, presentsoundsamsterdam.…

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Doek photographer in residence – Sara Anke Morris

john-dikeman-bariDoek Festival countdown
Sara Anke Morris photography

Strong music calls for strong images, and many, many jazz photographers have enriched our understanding of the art by capturing the way improvised action looks in the moment. The Doek festival and Doek’s musicians are grateful to the many photographers who have documented music on our stages over the years. To officially recognize the contribution such visual artists make, in 2015 the festival named the first Doek Photographer in Residence, Sara Anke Morris.

Belgium-born Sara Anke Morris says ‘I think I’m an intuitive photographer.’…

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Featured Artist – John Dikeman

John Dikeman2Doek Festival countdown
John Dikeman saxophone

John Dikeman was born in Nebraska in 1983 and grew up in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Thanks to the extreme isolation of his hometown, he spent most of his free time practicing and studying music. He quickly discovered the music of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, and Albert Ayler and instantly connected to the unmatched expressive power of free jazz. John was very fortunate to meet and collaborate with many excellent improvisers at a rather early age.…

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Featured Artist – Carl Testa

Carl Testa1Doek Festival countdown
Carl Testa bass, composition

Carl Testa: I am a composer and instrumentalist based in New Haven, CT and New York City. I am originally from Chicago, Illinois. While in Chicago, I studied music with Donn DeSanto, at the U of C Lab School, as well as at the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) School of Music. There I studied and performed with Mwata Bowden, Ann Ward, Avreeyal Ra, Steve Berry, Ernest Dawkins, Aaron Getsug, Isaiah Spencer, Stephen Ptacek, Will Faber, Noah Meites, Kevin Nabors, Justin Dillard, and many others.…

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Featured Artist – Taylor Ho Bynum

taylor HoDoek Festival countdown
Taylor Ho Bynum cornet, composition

Taylor Ho Bynum is a composer, cornet player, bandleader and interdisciplinary collaborator. Critics have called him “a singular and thrilling artist” (All About Jazz), “a major force on the outward-bound side of the jazz continuum” (The Boston Globe) and “a provocateur in the guise of a consensus builder” (The New York Times). Bynum currently leads his Sextet and 7-tette, and works with many collective ensembles including a duo with drummer Tomas Fujiwara, the improv trio Book of Three, the UK/US collaborative Convergence Quartet, the dance/music interdisciplinary ensemble Quartet Collective, and the trans-idiomatic little big band Positive Catastrophe.…