DOEK | Oscar Jan Hoogland

Oscar Jan Hoogland – piano, electric clavichord, guitar, voice

BIOGRAPHY

In DOEK, Oscar Jan Hoogland represents the so-called “fourth generation” of Dutch improvisers, in the lineage of Misha Mengelberg, Guus Janssen and Cor Fuhler—smart pianist/composers with an itch to make music that cuts across genres, who don’t take themselves so seriously, but whose whimsical music has real bite and brainpower.

Hoogland plays in a plethora of groups. They include: EKE, a trio with Yedo Gibson on reeds and Gerri Jäger on drums where he plays his unique homemade electric clavichord; the smart and playfully improvising quartet The Ambush Party with Natalio Sued on tenor Marcos Baggiani on drums and his long time companion Harald Austbø on cello. He plays duo with drummer Han Bennink, in Gibson’s roiling Royal Improvisers Orchestra, and in the bicycle-portable, words-and-music street outfit, the Bakfietsband. He leads his own recordplayer orchestra The Phonograph Orchestra and then there is the improvising post-punk band The Job where he takes up the guitar a moog and a megaphone to be one of four one-man-bands on stage next to Jochem van Tol, Onno Govaert and Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti.

Hoogland has been a devoted organiser over the years not only pushing his own bands forward but also initiating projects like the scene based repertoire project The Amsterdam Real Book, setting up festivals and music series in Amsterdam as well as running his own record label De Platenbakkerij. Currently he collaborates as a programmer with the EYE-filmmuseum and the OT301 for respectively the E*cinema series and the Eddie and the Eagles.

In reply to questions by Kevin Whitehead:
“Musicians basically play for two kinds of audiences, those who know you, and those who don’t. An audience that knows your music understands the language; there’s a shared understanding. Together you take off from the history of the music so far and go on from there, commenting on it, improving it, destroying it, reinventing and repeating it. If they wanted to know more about what I do—and they don’t have to—I could tell them that I am driven by an enthusiasm to explore, to try to go as far down a certain path as you need to figure out what it’s about. And then adding some different aspect to it.”

“The other great audience is the completely ignorant, innocent one. In a village in Brazil, EKE played for a young audience who’d never heard anything like it before, and they were sucked right into it.”

“EKE is about creating something new, with an abstract approach to sound and interaction.
I take it very seriously. The Ambush Party is about the game of instant composing, or instant songwriting. It’s also about being un-dogmatic, having aspects of serious sonic improvising, ironic Dutch theatrical impro, jazz and free jazz, modern contemporary music, pop songs, good taste and tastelessness. We love or hate all that music and in a free situation it all comes out. Playing duo with Han feels almost outside of time—like we’ve played together forever.”

“I like to be a chess player among tigers. But on other days I like to be the tiger myself.”