July 10
21:15
@ North Sea Jazz Rotterdam
sold out!
Oscar Jan, Peter & Han will play trio at the coming North Sea Jazz Festival.
Han Bennink is artist in residence for this edition of Holland’s biggest jazz festival. After having played many duo gigs, on this occasion Oscar Jan Hoogland and Han Bennink will be joined by the phenomenal Peter Evans for a trio performance.
For more information visit the website.…
June 26
23:15
@ Hotel New York Rotterdam
free entrance
The Ambush Party will give a concert at the Jazzdag!
Natalio Sued tenor sax
Oscar Jan Hoogland piano
Harald Austbø cello
Marcos Baggiani drums…
Blog 6: Monday 8 June
Withdrawal
by Kevin Whitehead
photography by Sara Anke Morris
Sunday, the final day of the Doek/Tri-Centric festival, let us listeners quietly come down from all the excitement the orchestra built up last week. A few American guests lingered to play yesterday’s four-stop bicycle tour. Still high from Saturday’s Misha Mengelberg retrospective, wherever we went musicians were playing his tunes. We only made it to half the biking gigs—partly because everyone has to sleep sometime, partly because when a house manager tells us we’ll need to don blindfolds in order to be seated, as at the Pianola Museum, we are tiptoeing backwards out the door.…
Blog #5 June 7
Sounds checked
by Kevin Whitehead
The Doek/Tri-Centric orchestra was playing the slow parts of Ingrid Laubrock’s “Offering,” soundchecking on Saturday afternoon. Glowing chords wafted up from the ensemble, and the beautiful blend of distinctive voices sounded eerily like some lost Gil Evans classic of the early 1960s: you could listen to those harmonies all day. This band/ensemble/musicians pool of 19 achieved that delicate balance of individual voices and collective strengths that makes jazz such a popular metaphor for societal relationships (and vice versa).…
Blog 4 by Kevin Whitehead
6 June Misha’s Weekend
Misha Mengelberg turned 80 yesterday, an event surrounded by some fanfare. Today, tweede mishadag, there’s a Mengelberg symposium in the Bimhuis (see you there), and music ahead on the same stage tonight. Yesterday afternoon there was an informal reception/preview for him in Amstelveen, where Koeien is rehearsing—his unfinished opera, newly realized and already sold-out: Mengelberg words and music, edited by Cherry Duyns (who wrote in a character who speaks in Misha interview quotes) and Guus Janssen, who added some operatic elaborations on Mengelberg melodies—literal soprano solos.…
Give It Up or the Band: Blog 3 Friday 5 June
by Kevin Whitehead
photography by Sara Anke Morris
Jazz festivals love to slap together combinations of well-known musicians, but some star-studded bands that look good on paper fizzle on stage—sometimes, frankly, because certain stars turn out to be jerks who aren’t easy to work with. Of course 20 nice people don’t necessarily make an ensemble either. This transatlantic bunch are especially congenial; you can see how much they enjoy each other’s company.…