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Dutch Jazz: Ten Recommended Recordings

From Available Jelly to Ernst Reijseger, Holland's improvisers offer a range of pleasures.
By archive-Kevin-Whitehead
August 31, 2000 / 7:43 PM

Holland has its fusion players, beboppers and Dixielanders, but it also has an indigenous improvised music scene. It's been greatly influenced by pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink, and within the scene, musicians bring a wide variety of personal approaches to the jazz tradition.

The following 10 recordings provide a window to Holland's homegrown jazz. It's a fairly small scene, as indicated by the interlocking personnel on the discs listed. Each CD features at least one present or past member of the ICP Orchestra.

(Click here for a full report on the ICP Orchestra.)

  • Available Jelly, Monuments (Ramboy, 1993) — Michael Moore is the driving force behind this colorful co-op, an octet in this incarnation, which also includes cornetist Eric Boeren (who leads a fine quartet of his own, with Moore and Bennink), tenor saxophonist Tobias Delius, and drummer Michael Vatcher. This time out Jelly is less a vehicle for Moore's playing than his lyrical composing and the players' deft ad hoc arranging.

  • Ab Baars, Verderame (Geestgronden, 1995) — On tenor Baars' hero is Von Freeman, who uses eccentric pitch to expressive ends. His clarinet hero (and teacher) is the late John Carter, who extended the instrument's topmost range with fingerings of his own devising. Baars' solos here reveal his debts to both, but their astonishing clarity of ideas and execution is all his own. To hear how he remakes his sources, hear "Rollins' Williamsburg Bridge," an audio-verité portrait of Sonny's legendary open-air practice sessions way back when.

  • Han Bennink/Dave Douglas, Serpentine (Songlines, 1996) — Acclaimed trumpeter Dave Douglas has delved deep into Dutch dizziness in recent years. In 1996, he recorded these duets, and guested with the Clusone 3 (Bennink, Moore, Ernst Reijseger) on a European tour. More recently he's learned a brace of Mengelberg tunes and has played with him in a few settings. At New York's Iridium, the week of Sept. 19–24, he'll lead a quartet with Mengelberg, Bennink and Mengelberg's favorite New York bassist, Brad Jones. (They'll cut a record as well.) On this duo set, the trumpeter's iron chops allow him to stand up to Bennink's onslaught on drums, although Bennink also spends a lot of time clogging, wooden shoes clattering on the studio's concrete floor. They free-improvise, and also jam on swing-time favorites such as "Cherokee" and "Young and Foolish."

  • Sean Bergin's MOB, Copy Cat (BVHaast, 1999) — The sleek melodies and simple chord progressions of South African jazz have left their mark on Dutch improvised music, chiefly through the influence of two on-site expatriates, the late bassist Harry Miller, and saxophonist and composer Sean Bergin. In 1987 Bergin assembled his big band, the MOB (My Own Band), to record one of the Dutch classics, the regrettably out-of-print Kids Mysteries (Nimbus). Of his subsequent albums, Copy Cat comes closest to replicating its strengths: The tunes are as ear-catching as good pop; the riffs and crossriffs keep the textures agreeably dense, the rhythm charging ahead and the soloists motivated. The 11-piece MOB include Eric Boeren, Wolter Wierbos, Tobias Delius, Mary Oliver, Tristan Honsinger, Ernst Glerum and Bennink.

  • Tobias Delius 4tet, Toby's Mloby (ICP, 1999) — Delius' tenor sound is big and furry, more like a '30s saxophone hero than a free-jazzer, but the quartet — Bennink on drums, Joe Williamson on bass and Honsinger on cello — shows the influence of Mengelberg's organizational tactics. Any member is free to call up any tune in the quartet's book at any time — even if they've already played it. The result is music as fluid and slippery as Delius' timing as a soloist. He's an original everyone should know about.

  • Cor Fuhler/Wilbert de Joode/Han Bennink, Bellagram (Geestgronden, 1998) — If Guus Janssen is a second-generation Mengelbergian, Fuhler is third-generation: He writes catchy little ditties that his trio can twist in the wind. As a pianist he's full of puckish grace, but he also plays organ, in goofy '60s-rock-band fashion, and his homemade "keyolin" — a two-string violin rigged up to a two-and-a-half-octave keyboard. It can make him sound oddly like Ray Nance, except that no violinist plays as many broad octave leaps as he does.

  • ICP Orchestra, Jubilee Varia (hatOLOGY, 1997) — The ICP are woefully underrepresented on record. As a showcase for Mengelberg's compositions, the one to get is the 1990–91 Bospaadje Konijnehol II (ICP 029), but Jubilee Varia is the truest picture of the live band, a snapshot of the rollickingly unpredictable progress of its live sets. This is the version with both Reijseger and Honsinger on cello.

  • Janssen/Glerum/Janssen, Lighter (Geestgronden, 1992–1995) — Like Mengelberg, composer and pianist Guus Janssen is equally at home in composed and improvised music. His trio with brother Wim Janssen on drums and Glerum on bass blur the line between them. Guus Janssen's witty and precisely executed pieces make his trio sound like a chamber group masquerading as a jazz band — or the other way around.

  • Misha Mengelberg, Two Days in Chicago (hatOLOGY, 1998) — These live and studio recordings are the best sampler yet of Mengelberg as solo and small-group improviser and as Thelonious Monk interpreter. The supporting cast includes Baars, percussive bassist de Joode and meticulously precise drummer Martin van Duynhoven and Chicago saxophonists Fred Anderson and Ken Vandermark and drummer Hamid Drake.

  • Ernst Reijseger, Colla Parte (Winter & Winter, 1997) — Reijseger's invention and virtuosity on cello have made Yo-Yo Ma a fan and sometime collaborator, and this solo outing is the best demonstration of what he has to offer: simultaneous plucking above and below the bridge, in two meters; precise bowing; intricate rhythms indebted to West African and South Indian musics; strummed chords to make Count Basie's guitarist Freddie Green proud; and more homemade techniques than you can shake a bow at. Selections include pieces by Mengelberg and Abdullah Ibrahim.

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