Dutch Jazz
Jazz has established many homes outside its country of birth, but recently these widely dispersed musical bases are starting to get together. Musicians and fans in countries all over the world have begun creating their own exchanges far from the dominating Vatican-cum-Mecca of jazz--New York City. The jazz scenes in Holland and Japan—long two of the most thriving—stepped up their cultural exchanges this year with more tours than ever.
The last several years have had a flurry of such exchanges between Japan and Northern Europe. Groups from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark all toured Japan last year. With support from embassies, music NPOs and specialty recording labels, musicians can now present their music directly to Japanese fans. For musicians from Holland, it is the latest chapter of a relationship established 400 years ago when Dutch ships arrived in Nagasaki.
Three of the best, Faye Claassen, Rob Van Bavel and the ICP Orchestra have delivered powerful shows in Tokyo this fall. Claasen's often-wordless vocals, Van Bavel's muscular, complex piano and the ICP's whimsical boundary busting could not be more diverse. What they do have in common are enthusiastic Japanese fans.
Fay Claassen:
Fay Claassen's vocal style turns her entire body into an instrument. Her voice—with or without words--blends with the other instruments as gently as any melodic reed or brass instrument would. Her singing shows influences from horn players much as from singers. Claassen's two CDs (released this year on 55 Records) are both dedicated to one of jazz's most loved if tragic figures, Chet Baker. Baker lived the final years of his life in Holland and despite a drug dependency, inspired the scene there before his death in 1988.
After her show at the Yokohama Jazz Promenade this fall, Claassen talked about how she and the band worked with Baker's legacy in their own way. "I started to collect a lot of tunes from Chet. Every week the band met and together we listened to the songs, and found a whole list of songs that were in the same key at the same tempo, so many that the producer finally offered to bring out a double CD," she laughed.
Claassen and baritone saxophonist, Jan Menu, who had played with Baker in his final years, create a dual melodic voice that follows not the letter but the spirit of his music. Claassen said, "I never think of Chet Baker while I sing, or try to imitate his solos, but just keep the feeling intact. The other musicians in the band played with him, but they never told me what to do. As we went deeper and deeper into this stuff, it was incredible, these lines are amazing."
The Dutch group also captures the expressive range of Baker, whose singing was as influential as his cool west coast style. The two CDs divide into instrumental tunes and tunes with lyrics. "I'm usually a singer of songs with lyrics, but I tend to improvise a lot and go in a lot of instrumental ways," said Claassen. What emerges in the music is a dual portrait of Baker, but also a portrait of the Dutch style of jazz.
The shows on the Japan tour started with instrumental vocals before turning to lyrics, a not-so-easy switch. Claassen said, "It's quite difficult to do in one set. The musical story may be the same, but with lyrics I'm more close to myself emotionally. The words need working on the tones and the phrasing, but when you are working instrumentally you are working on a line." Claassen is one of the rare contemporary singers who fully enters into both lyrics and melody lines.
Hiroshi Itsuno, head of 55 Records, a specialty label for Dutch jazz who released the two CDs, said, "Faye's approach is very fresh to Japanese as she is so different from Japanese singers, very natural with no gimmicks." Claassen performed in Japan as a dancer in the past, but on the enthusiastic response to her shows here, she said, " I think Japanese are very open to emotions and creativity." Claassen and band provided plenty of both.
Rob Van Bavel:
Rob Van Bavel's piano playing melds classically trained technique with harmonic sophistication. He plays precisely, but with wide-open feeling. That sounds like a contradiction, but van Bavel makes it work. His trio has a particularly gentle sound that works with the piano's natural range of tones. As Itsuno noted, "Compared to American piano players, he really knows how to make the sound come out of the piano."
The last pianist to play with Chet Baker, he also dedicated his most recent release, "Almost Blue," to Baker. Between sets during last fall's tour of Japan, he told the story of his strange relation to the jazz icon. "I was playing in a club in Rotterdam with my own band and Chet Baker came in and he started playing with us. Two days later, he died. A lot of media came, but we only played three or four tunes together. Even in Israel last year, a lot of media came, then, too," he mused.
His straight-on piano style owes much to his classical background, and surely also to his teaching piano in three conservatories in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Tilberg. Of this Dutch style, van Bavel said, "I think we have a sort of classical approach. I think the classical style is less in jazz. Especially when I listen to the older players, like my favorite Tommy Flanagan, you hear almost no classical music whatsoever."
If that sounds like a fault, it is one that makes for a beautiful difference. Van Bavel explained, "Almost all Dutch piano players start with classical music, concentrating on technique, interpretation and expression. You can hear this in terms of the touch on the piano. It has a clean and pure sound." From a European point of view, then, it would seem classical piano is one of the best bases for jazz.
This Dutch divergence from American jazz tradition may be just another way of listening to past jazz masters. More than phrasing or substituting chords in a classical way, van Bavel sees it as a question of influences. "I listened to Oscar Peterson really because of the incredible technique. But the harmonic stuff relates to Bill Evans who also learned jazz through classical music."
Whatever the training, the jazz scene in Europe is flourishing. "It's pretty busy, but the good thing about being a piano player is you can play with any band. I play with like ten different groups, so I have four or seven shows a week." Internationalization makes it easier on musicians, too. "It's so easy to travel these days. We play a lot in Germany, and in Spain, even Las Vegas, and South Africa next year. I've been to Indonesia and tried to put in a touch of gamelan music!" he said. One wonders just who is influencing who in this case.
ICP Orchestra:
One of the longest-running bands in Holland is the ICP Orchestra, a loose collective of unabashed musical performers who love to improvise in every sense of the word. They packed Roppongi's Super Deluxe early November for two sets of wildly unpredictable yet still tradition-savvy music.
The two mainstays of the band are pianist Misha Mengelberg, who provides most of the compositions, and drummer Hans Bennink, who not only provides percussion but during the show turned the club into one giant drum. Every road manager's dream, he brought only one actual drum on stage, a small snare. That was all that was needed, as Bennink knows how to drum on the walls, his chair and even, unbelievably, his teeth. Wherever and however he hit, though, the rhythms kept flying.
Meanwhile, the ICP's three saxes, trumpet, trombone, violin, and bass all collectively pursued their own sense of direction. The music stretched into some odd shapes, but eventually snapped back together into a fascinating, if not always exactly harmonious whole. During their show, it was hard at times to keep the multiple forces clear. The horns and strings faced off, free jazz blasts followed minimalist near-silence, and gutsy blues-based solos sprung up in the middle of sensitive orchestral flow. It all made sense, but its own kind of sense.
The band knew its history, though not as any rigid precedent. They could take a Thelonius Monk tune straight or delicately deliver Ellington-like flourishes, but usually they would break up the seriousness before it got too far. During one drum solo, everyone in the band "died," dropping their instruments and slinking to the floor. As they got back up, the groove built back up to a hard, fast swing that had the crowd whooping with delight. The Japanese fans loved this goofiness, maybe because it is all too rare a commodity here.
With all these shows, and several more to come from Europe before the year is out, it is increasingly clear that, as Itsuno declared, "Everywhere around the world, except maybe North Korea, has a jazz scene, no matter how small. Jazz is truly a global language." A recent book by Stuart Nicholson was provocatively titled "Is Jazz Dead, or Has It Moved to a New Address?" The answer to that question was well answered by the Dutch bands in Japan--at least two new addresses.
(Originally published in The Japan Times, November 2006)