Successful try-out in “de kreek”

Last Sunday on the 28th of September, we did a try-out in Oosterbeek.
Starting off with Chan’s Song, a song by Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder, it took us about 3 tunes to get really “warm”.
The crowd was very enthusiastic and cheered us through the first set; we ended with Part 1 Acknowledgement from John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme album. After some coffe and nice words from all our friends and fans we started the second set with Kenny Kirkland’s Dienda. We played more relaxed and freely and continued with Prince of Darkness by trumpeter Eric Vloeimans, letting it all go with the flow…
We all had a great time and a good feeling about “the show”, some very nice comments and positive feedback confirmed us all in believing that we’re on the right track. Our setlist can be found here: Setlist-2012-10-28

NSJ very short review

We had a GREAT time in Rotterdam at NSJ. What a festival this is. We started with Dafnis Prieto in Darling which was very good. Halfway we went to Dhafer Youssef but is was too crowded to see anything, so we gave up. After that we saw McCoy Tiner with Ravi Coltrane, which was ok -too much mainstream I guess and no suprises-. Pablo and I split up: I went to Lee Konitz and Joey Baron, which was very special! and Pablo went to see the Metropole with Vince Mendoza, Peter Erskine and John Scofield: very very good (rem: we both bought Nights on Earth). Then it was time for the Hollow Body band, with John Scofield and Kurt Rosenwinkel, they blew us away; very inspiring music this is. As far as I know they have not released an album yet, but I bet this will be great. Now it was time for Joe Lovano who started off on soprano sax, switching now and then to to Tenor: good stuff. We approached the end of this music night but not before we saw Brian Blade’s Fellowship Band, and they topped it all: music so beautiful and complete, beyond words… Buy Season of Change and you know what I mean. See you next year.

Gert Jan

NSJ

Pablo and I (GJ) are visiting North Sea Jazz this afternoon. Very exciting, there is so much to see: Joshua Redman, Peter Erskine, Dhafer Youssef,  McCoy Tiner with Ravi Coltrane, Brian Blade and many more. Some are parallel session so it will be hard to make a choice, we’ll see…