North Sea Jazzfest 05

hermann · May-11th-2005, 10:33 AM

I just found out, the program is online now http://www.northseajazz.com/index.asp

so check Your line

gnhrtg · May-11th-2005, 11:02 AM

Thanks for this, Hermann. Pretty good program, below is a summary for the lazy (of what I find interesting) - of concerts that are on at different times, apart from two or's:

Friday, 8th of July - Brad Mehldau solo, ICP Orchestra, Henry Threadgill's Zooid, Perico Sambeat Group w/Mehldau and Rosenwinkel

Saturday, 9th of July - Dave Holland Big Band, Roberto Gambarini or Vijay Iyer Quartet, Richard Galliano N.Y. Trio

Sunday, 10th of July - Dave Holland duo w/Trilok Gurtu, Brad Shepik Trio, John Zorn's Masada, Stevne Bernstein's nine piece ensemble or Randy Weston Quintet

So, damn, that looks good - and my finances aren't looking all that good this year and I was thinking of skipping this (as I already made a commitment to go to Mulhouse).

gnhrtg · May-16th-2005, 05:48 AM

Anyone else thinking of making this? I think I'm beyond help as I already booked my hotel and will get the tickets soon - will be there all three days, and most likely with my girlfriend (we'll see who wins the battle over, is it Ibrahim Ferrer or Brad Mehldau solo).

gnhrtg · June-2nd-2005, 12:58 PM

So, I booked and paid for all my tickets - train, hotel, festival. Looking forward to it, will be there with my girlfriend, if all goes well.

Anyone?

Pete C · June-2nd-2005, 01:01 PM

Gokhan, are you staying at that same hotel on the beach? I envy you, but my schedule and the exchange rate won't allow it.

gnhrtg · June-2nd-2005, 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pete C

Gokhan, are you staying at that same hotel on the beach? I envy you, but my schedule and the exchange rate won't allow it.

No, unfortunately not that hotel this time, Pete. It was fully booked by the time we had made up our mind. We'll be staying at Hampshire Hotel, quite close to the convention center - for one thing because it was just about the only hotel not fully booked and because the third night is free (still it's quite expensive, I'd say).

Hey, the exchange rate is going down, but I know you won't be lured so I hope we can meet some other time, soon.

Pete C · June-2nd-2005, 01:39 PM

If I were going, my top choices would be:

Friday

Chano Dominguez
Al Green
Tomatito

Saturday

Anouar Brahem
Romane & Stochelo Rosenberg
Solomon Burke

Sunday

Afro-Cuban All Stars
Hermeto Pascoal

There are some great jazz acts, but I can see most of them in NY pretty easily. I think the choices are pretty different if you live in Europe.

gnhrtg · July-2nd-2005, 06:17 PM

So, Hermann are you coming for this? Anyone else?

Anyway, here are the concerts we're thinking of attending - if you've seen these guys in action, preferably recently, you're most welcome to encourage/warn me.

Friday: Ibrahim Ferrer - bought supplementary tickets for this so this is one we'll go to for sure, meaning we'll miss the solo Mehldau sets)

ICP Orchestra - Finally, very much looking forward to this one. Frankly, regardless of how good the concert turns out to be, I'll be very happy to have seen them in action at least once.

Henry Threadgill's Zooid - This I will see for sure but I told my girlfriend that she'd probably actually enjoy this as well, because of the line-up and the groove/pulse based nature of Threadgill's music - though I haven't heard either of the latest releases on Pi yet, this is based on his earlier small/medium ensemlbe work.

Not sure about the last slot but it'd be either Tomatito Sextet or Perico Sambeat Group featuring Mehldau and Rosenwinkel.

Saturday: Either Dave Holland Big Band or Anouar Brahem. I haven't heard any of Anouar Brahem's albums in full but of the snippet's I've heard, this "project" sounded pretty interesting. As for Holland, well I don't know when next I'd have the chance to catch the group near where I live (well, they're playing in Paris next week but the tickets are for about 30 euros).

Romane and Stochelo Rosenberg Double Jeu - Amazing guitarist(s), yes they tend to repeat some licks all too often and play all the variations, as 16th notes, of sequences of the diminished scale there are but the energy, virtuosity, and the joy is usually enough to carry the day. And it'll further add to the variety of the overall musical program over the three days.

Vijay Iyer Quartet Featuring Rudresh Mahanthappa - Saw them as a duo last year, was blown away. Have three of their albums, like them a lot and if I enjoy the concert, I'll also pick-up Reimagining.

Richard Galliano New York Trio

Sunday: Yes, well, we'll most likely see the Afro-Cuban all stars for the first slot. It should be fun.

Not sure about the second slot, possibly the Brad Shepik trio, but has anyone seen this incarnation - it's with Tom Rainey on drums and Gary Versace on organ, how does the music sound like (and that question is primarily because the organ is there)?

John Zorn Acoustic Masada - I don't know how long Zorn'll keep this band going, but again I really like Live in Seville, Masada, and at Tonic, so let's see. Have never seen them live.

And we'll stay in the same hall for the last concert, Steven Bernstein's Sex Mob.

Pete C · July-2nd-2005, 06:36 PM

Gokhan, I saw Tomatito recently. He was astounding.

gnhrtg · July-3rd-2005, 04:41 PM

Pete C to the rescue, as usual. So we have decided to go see the Tomatito Sextet (instead of Perico Sambeat featuring Mehldau and Rosenwinkel).

On another note - hey no one else seems to be going so why not take the next step and turn this into a notepad for myselfy for all things NSJ - normally I'm not one after these things but I'm thinking of taking some Misha and Threadgill related discs with me to have the gentlemen sign them. I've never interacted with either so don't know what category they fall under: Some musicians are geniunely interested in meeting fans and seeing appreciation for their music while others are of the snobber variety and then I'd really not bother.

gnhrtg · July-12th-2005, 03:55 AM

First day, 8th of July, Friday: Ibrahim Ferrer (PWA Zaal), ICP Orchestra (Mondrian Zaal), Henry Threagill's Zooid (Mondrian Zaal), Brad Mehldau solo
(Rembrandtzaal)

As a result of late making up of our minds and late booking, we stayed at not the nice little hotel by the sea, as I did the last time, but at a chain-style
hotel. The nice thing about this hotel was its location, it was within 15 minutes' walk of the congress center, where the festival is held. Not only that but you walk through a really nice area, which includes the street that houses most of the embassies. The festival is moving to Rotterdam as of next year so it's a shame that more people won't have the chance to walk through the nice parts of The Hague not to mention Scheveningen.

The music, then:

Ibrahim Ferrer "Mi Sueno - a Bolero Songbook" - So I hadn't had high hopes for this seeing that it was Ferrer's band and the only other name in the band familiar to me was bass player Cachaito Lopez (it was a nine piece band augmented by, if I got that correctly, a Dutch string quartet), but my girlfriend really wanted to see it and I thought, well, it'll probably be fun if nothing more. The short it is that I had a very good time and the piano player, Roverto Fonseca, was the star among the instrumentalists - yes, he does tend towards the stock-Cuban-flash-licks and does play to the crowd but even then I think he has good taste, imagination, and technique to pull most of the stuff off with flair. The other soloists, horn section, I could have done without as soloists, really, especially Javier Zalba when he played the soprano saxophone. But, again, when they were playing the charts and with the drummer, a percussionist, and backing vocalist Idania joining in with a hand-held percussion every now and then, all kicking in it was very good butt-shaking fun. Most of the material was mid-tempo and not straining Ferrer's voice, in terms of range, and I think it was good judgment on his part to do it this way - I think he only played one ballad and Dos Gardenias, as a quasi-ballad, as an encore. All in all, I'm very glad we went.

ICP Orchestra - They started with the string trio, of Mary Oliver on violin, Tristan Honsinger on cello and Ernst Gleurm on bass, improvising which was joined very shortly afterwards with Michael Moore, on clarinet, and they went on improvising around some framework for a while before sliding into a tune, at which point the rest of the horn section joined them - Wolter Wierbos on trombone, Thomas Heberer on trumpet and Ab Baars and Tobias Delius on reeds (the band is rounded up by Han Bennink on drums and the mastermind Misha Mengelberg on piano). Let's see what I can remember - Mary Oliver conducted and improvisation, which was fine but not more, they played Rollo II, and some new material, from what I could tell. Now the mixing wasn't particularly good and you know with Han it's always going to be a problem so as little as he played anyway, it was difficult to hear Misha in the ensemble passages. So, most of the playing served to confirm my overall impressions of the players while on the whole the music left me disappointed: Honsinger is still coaxing the same licks, Glerum is solid and holding the stuff together, Ab Baars took a long and raucous solo which did absolutely nothing for me and for me he's the least interesting soloist in the band. One of the two highlights was a Wierbos/Delius improvised duo section, during which Wierbos deconstructed/reconstructed his trombone and Delius matched him blow-for-blow and more on tenor - Delius has a nice tone and so much control over the horn, plus it really is a hoot to watch him play. The other highlight was Moore's ballad feature, forgot the tune - was a standard iirc, actually all his solos were good. Michael Moore has a heavenly tone both on alto and clarinet and he too has lots of control over and freedom with his phrasing. He played both the melody and soloed gorgeously. Heberer took one solo during which he played rather characteristically, bebop and pre-bop vocabularly imbued with his steely and pinched tone and behind the beat playing - it was ok but nothing special. During the few minutes in total that I could make out his playing, Misha was interesting and searching and Han made sure to play a few loud and fast solos - the notable thing is he can still pull them off pretty effectively.

Henry Threadgill's Zooid - This must've been the most disappointing concert of the festival, but it had more to do with the sound than the playing. Still, it's the second time I can remember when I walked out of a concert due to frustration (the first was Jonas Kulhammar Quartet at last year's Kongsberg Jazz Festival). Zooid is Threadgill on alto sax and flute, Jose Davila on tuba and trombone, Dana Leong on cello and trombone, Liberty Ellman on acoustic guitar, Tarik Benbrahim on oud, and Elliot Humberto Kavee on drums. They all did quite a bit of reading, following the sheet music, throughout but I felt sorry for the oud player in particular, who barely took his eyes of the sheet music - though he still checkout out Ellman for cues every now and then. My first problem was the immense, disturbing, bass in and harshness of the overall sound - the cello was hurting my ears and so was the trombone, not to mention Ellman's guitar which was borderline bearable, and I'd never heard a flute sound so aggresive. Perhaps such a sound was Threadgill's preference, though I doubt it, but it sure demanded an immense motivation to overlook these and focus on the music. As for the music, Threadgill had the band play the multi-layered grooves way too long for my taste and most of the soloists didn't sound all that comfortable while navigating Threadgill's compositions. Each song was preceded by an unaccompanied solo by one of the members, my favorite was Dana Leong's cello introduction, and later on in that piece he also took a memorable trombone solo, was my favorite moment during the concert, I think. I will still check out the band's album through e-music but I must say that the sound sucked big time, and they didn't sound all that together, and I had the impressions that only rarely were the soloists able to play with the level of abandon that leads to full expression or more interesting, developmental, solos. Still, Kavee and that cello/trombone player I'll be watching closely.

Brad Mehldau Solo - So what happened was that Mehldau was scheduled to play two short - North Sea Jazz allocated 75 minutes to each act and Brad's were 45 minutes each - solo sets early on in the day and since we had opted for Ferrer, we would have missed our chance of seeing him play. Well, while watching the announcement screens right Zooid, I noticed that they were announcing another Mehldau set at Rembrandtzaal at 12.00 - just before Perico Sambeat Group, which was featuring Brad and Kurt Rosenwinkel. Perhaps this was a last minute call and Brad had agreed to play yet another set or perhaps he played only one set earlier, I don't know. The hall was totally packed, to full capacity in terms of standing, seated, and sitting on the floor crowd. Brad played a number of songs of the recent Live in Tokyo album, which I don't have, Knives Out, Paris from his Places - in a medley with a Jobim song, River Man, Countdown, and perhaps another tune or two. Most of you, I assume, know how Brad approaches playing solo - to me it's fresh and interesting to hear him play the same tunes in different performances because he always seems to build up on different aspects of the composition, yes he'll mostly build from the melody and elaborate
and place it in a different background, what he's doing with his right hand mostly, in many different ways but he also builds from the rhythm or he harmony of the tune. So he's at least trying to do something substantially different each time. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but at least this particular night he had the good taste to keep it short when it wasn't really working, or when he hadn't more to say. All in all, this is another concert I was very happy to have seen. Even though it could have been better, I was happy to see Mehldau taking chances to do something different and setting up challenges for himself.

We had intended to go see Tomatito for the last slot but went with Mehldau. However, since Mehldau's set was short we still had about half an hour to go see the Tomatito Sextet. Alas, we were informed that the Dakterras was already full so much so that they wouldn't let anyone else in - and this is a large hall with plenty of standing space, so I'm guessing it was a good show.

Didn't have much time to do browsing through the disc stalls the ones there don't have much of interest to me anyway, i.e., they mostly have the major labels which I can find pretty much anywhere, and the prices are not all that cheap either. Still, I meticulously worked my way through a 5 euros sales rack and came away with Greg Osby's Further Ado and Ben Allison's Peace Pipe. Oh, and I also picked up Wayne Shorter's Footprints Live! (counting on you Pete C) and Bobby Hutcherson's Oblique (if Micael Schaumann's even half-right, I should be quite happy with this) - for 10 euros each.

More, second and third day reports, to follow soon.

Moose · July-13th-2005, 08:39 AM

Cool to read North Sea impressions from some-one who's not from Holland (And I have to say I'm feeling a little proud now that my small country has such a festival, which attrackts loads of people from abroad)

I'll write down my experiences, since it's so fun to read someone elses (hope you do write about the other two days, mister nonvowel-name)

Friday: I had to start with Chaka Khan and the Metropole Orchestra, since I love them both. It was a really fun concert, Chaka yelling out as ever, though I didn't like the work from her new cd (Classikhan or something) so much. These are all great classic songs (like Hazel's Hips) but I rather hear Oscar Brown Jr perform them than Khan.

Then Dwight Trible. Amazing vocalist, really, nice funky band around him. But alas, everytime the electronics-guy played along, it was utterly vague, non-interesting jamming-on-one-chord-stuff. When do people learn you can use electronics and still play songs?

Picked a few Robert Cray-songs along the way, out of sentiment, and went on to see David Sanborn. I don't like Sanborn, and after this concert I still don't, but his rythm section was a blast. Terry Line-Carrington, Don Elias and Christian McBride, woohoo! Had a great time, but heard a lot of people who saw them the following day (on friday he was playing because the Mars Volta had cancelled last-minute) and didn't like it at all.

Then I went up to the Roof Terrace, and lucky bastard me, got right in to see the Tomatito Sextet. Amazing, amazing, amazing. as a friend of mine said: 'Tomatito apparently listened to a cd by di Lucia, diMeola and McLaughlin, and thought: 'I want to be able to do that' He just made one mistake: He thought it was one guitarplayer in stead of three.' Shame the sound wasn't as good as it could have been.

Saturday: Started with the Dave Holland big band. Beautiful, but just not exciting enough for me (I know loads of people will disagree with me on that one)
Then went to see Roomtone, a very unknown Dutch band (it was there first gig ever) of which I happened to know the guitarplayer/composer. Most inspiring concert of the festival, for me. Totallly eclectic, great use of electronics, seldom been so impressed by one's compositional skills. 80% of the audience left after the first song, but I was completely swept off my feet. Fantastic.
Then fleck, Clarke and Ponty. Absolutly loved Fleck and Ponty, but Clarke was fucking up, also due to bad monitoring if I understood correctly. Also bad sound in front of the stage, due to in-ear-monitoring. And the compositions were fairly uninteresting, and Clarkes solo's got me feeling aggressive, so I left for Soulive. Soulive was great! Couldn't see much, the Potter-room being too small, only some afro's bobbing around above the heads of the audience, but these kids can play! Very funky, danced my head of.
Which continued on the gypsy-stage, with DJ Shantel warming up the audience for the Bucovina Club Orkestar. DJ as well band played only traditional Balkan-stuff, which I love, maybe not the most skillful musicians ever, but the complete audience went berserk, dancing on chairs, shouting with the singer (hop!hop!hop!) Most delightful experience.

Sunday: Because I like Cuban music, and wanted to be in front of the stage desperately for Steps Ahead, I enjoyed the Afro-Cuban Allstars in the Statenhal. Very good, if not perfect, and that was the only thing that bothered me a little, it was a bit too smooth. But still very enjoyable. And then the thing we were really waiting for: Steps ahead feat. Richard Bona!!
Shame ofcourse Michael Brecker wasn't there (I pray he's doing better soon!!) but Bill Evans made a surprisingly good stand-in. They played all the right songs, starting out with Beirut (yay!) played this beautiful Mike Stern-tune from his latest album, Mike Manieri was as genius as ever, as were Bona and Steve Smith. Great, great concert!
After that I just should have gone and sit somewhere in peace, because after a gig like that nothing else sounds really good, I experienced. Saw a bit of Ben Allison, who just won the Bird Award, and it was nice, although it puzzles me why the guy doesn't buy an electric bass. Sounding the way he sounds and playing the things he plays, everything would be so much easier if he threw the double bass out of the window and I wouldn't hear the difference. Then to Oene van Geel, Dutch violinist I thought I liked, but didn't so much in the end, but featuring Jasper Blom on tenorsax, whom I've known to be great for years, and I discovered this young Dutch bassplayer I didn't know, who was quite exceptional.
At the end of the third day, feeling a bit exhausted and not in the mood for dancing, I decided to skip Maceo as well as Guaco, and squeezed myself into the Steen-zaal, for some nice bebop by the Charlie Parker legacy band. Turned out to be much more spectacular than I expected. I only knew Vincent Herring (alto-sax) he played once in the live-music joint where I work, and I didn't like him so much then. But now he was great, as were the other saxplayers, and especialy the rest of the band. Old cats, all of them, (Ray Drummond (b) Ronnie Matthews (pi) Jimmy Cobb (dr) ) playing great. After an hour or so, Johnny Griffin and Benny Golson joined in, but although the stories about New York in the 40ties and about how they all met were loads of fun, the music didn't get much better, so after an hourandahalf of Parker-stuff, I left to team up with my friends and drive home.

All in all, I dare to say allready it was again the best weekend of the year for me!

Hope you enjoyed reading my report, I hope to see some others appear, it's fun to read about what others did and what they thought of the artists.

Cheers,
Elizabet

Pete C · July-13th-2005, 10:44 AM

Elizabet, I've seen the Dave Holland Big Band twice, and the Quintet numerous times; I tend to agree that the big band lacks some of the excitement of the smaller group.

Moose · July-13th-2005, 10:57 AM

I can imagine that, maybe the thing I miss in the bigband is the thing that has made me such a lover of jazzmusic in the first place: The interaction between individual musicians. You just don't get to see that so much in a large group of musicians. But I'll be sure to check out the quintet, I liked Robin Eubanks very much in the bigband, and I still think Dave Holland is an amazing composer and performer.

gnhrtg · July-13th-2005, 11:06 AM

Elizabet - Thanks for sharing your impressions, and though I want(Ed) to write a little more about it, I, too, didn't find the Dave Holland Big Band to be all that exciting. Also, I think Mark Turner substituted for Chris Potter - and I don't know whether this was a one timer but I thought it strange since Potter played the previous night as part of the John Scofield quartet.

Anyway, more to come from me but just to note what I saw:

Saturday - Dave Holland Big Band, then about 20 minutes each of RH Factor with Roy Hargrove, Chantz, and Krakatau, then all of Vijay Iyer Quartet featuring Rudresh Mahanthappa. Since I picked up Iyar's latest after the concert (directly from him for 12 euros, finally getting a decent price) and had a chat with him, and more with Rudresh, we couldn't make it in time to see the Richard Galliano Trio, it was full and the doors were closed.

Sunday - Matthew Herbert's Plat du Jour, Hermeto Pascoal, Acoustic Masada, Steven Bernstein's Sex Mob.

Pete C · July-13th-2005, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnhrtg

Also, I think Mark Turner substituted for Chris Potter - and I don't know whether this was a one timer but I thought it strange since Potter played the previous night as part of the John Scofield quartet.

It was not a one-timer. At least one of the times I saw the big band Turner was featured instead of Potter. And, IIRC, didn't Potter play alto on one of the big band albums?

Moose · July-13th-2005, 11:31 AM

Ah, yeah, I forgot, in my post-Steps-ahead-delirium I also visited John Zorn, only to hear the encore. Did you like it? For me, it was, well, how to put this kindly, a little bit over the edge. But fun to see the whole audience being very enthousiastic about music that just didn't get to me at all.

gnhrtg · July-18th-2005, 08:34 AM

Second day, 9th of July, Saturday: Dave Holland Big Band (Dakterras), about thirty minutes of Krakatau (Carel Willink Zaal), and Vijay Iyer Quartet (billed as Vijay Iyer Quartet featuring Rudresh Mahanthappa) (Carel Willink Zaal).

And by the way, I am aware that these posts are ridiculously lengthy for the points they make but had no time for editing, sorry.

Dave Holland Big Band - We were dismayed to see, going in at about 17.45 - an hour before the scheduled time of the concert, that the roof terrace was already more than half full. This, as we were expecting to find seats in the front rows or at least in the middle batch of seats. In the end we got decent seats, a bit too far from the stage for my liking and to the left. The point is that I was expecting the concert to be popular but not this popular. So we sat there for an hour (luckily, I had with me Michel Houellebecq's Platform, plus some rather talkative people behind us so time went by pretty quickly). As far as I could tell the band was the usual line-up but with Mark Turner instead of Chris Potter. Actually now that I check the line-up, it was indeed Mark Tuner who was announced. This was my first time seeing any of Dave Holland's recent ensembles, Quintet or the Big Band, live and compared to many, Dave turned out to be quite talkative on stage - he introduced the players right after the numbers where they soloed, at times along with some short praising commentary, and also went through the names of each again at the end. He also seemed pleasantly surprised by the amount of interest for the early set. They played compositions from both of their records. When Holland announced Razor's Edge near the end of the concert, there was quite a holler from a bunch of guys (I like that one too but they sounded truly exulted and shouted as if they'd just won the national lottery) - Dave was amused and said something like "Thank you, mother."

As for the music, I think I caught them on an off night - and this refers to the solos only. I was looking forward to Alex Sipiagin's and Robin Eubanks's solos but the former turned out to be pretty ordinary and Robin took his solo, first one he might have taken a shorter solo later, on a tune that had quite a bit ensemble work going on behind him and he was mixed low so I could really only hear the forte passages, which weren't many. Antonio Hart took a pretty conventional and unhurried - milking, savoring each note with his round tone and vibrato, yet well played, blues solo. Pretty much everone took at least a solo each but the only two I found out of the ordinary were Holland's solo introduction to one of the tunes, the man still plays very comfortably and I do like his linear conception, and almost all of Steve Nelson's solos. Now, Nelson I thought had made almost the weakest contribution to Extended Play, the quintet's live album, but he was on fire this very night. I should have taken notes, really, but he took a very non-conventional spare, chordal solo on a blues - where both the chords and the timing were as removed from a "blues" feel as possible. On his next solo, different tune, he started the solo by playing an oblique phrase and went on to invert and elaborate it ina multitude of ways and he followed this nice feat by unleashing a barrage of nicely constructed and lengthy double-timed lines - and to my surprise, I could actually hear him play, though less so when he was playing the marimba, luckily he took most/all? of his solos on the vibraphone.

The one thing I don't like about North Sea Jazz is that they schedule concerts for 75 minutes and oftentimes, even if I like the music, it is simply too long for me and I start to lose interest. This was a case in point, and all said, I would've preferred to see the quintet. I'm glad to have seen the big band live but I have What Goes Around on ECM and, at least for now, I won't be picking up Overtime.

Krakatau - This was an Indonesian ensemble of seven. One drumkit player, an electric bassist, a vocalist, one pianist/keyboard player, someone playing bamboo flute and "tarompet" - but also joining in on percussion every now and then, and the remaining two were playing percussion full time. We were there for the last half an hour only (the intention was to secure good seats for the following concert, see below) but then regretted not having walked in even earlier as it turned out to be a pretty enjoyable thirty minutes - except for the first few minutes where we witnessed an ok, but certainly overlong bass solo. So they built nice grooves through the use of the traditional percussion instruments and the wind soloist had some fun playing an unaccompanied solo on the tarompet, I think it was, where he gradually deconstructed the instrument, at the end playing with what was only a tiny part of the mouthpiece - duck calls, baybee. The vocalist, Nyak Ina Raseuki, had a very strong voice she could project really well - being Turkish, I'm used to hearing such open and strong voices but it was still a nice change, as - you might guess - the style of singing, with lots of yelps and hollers, is also different from what you encounter in most other music you hear at jazz festivals. So the last piece, somewhat predictably though not all that worse for it, built to an exhilirating percussion climax and rose the audience to their feet.

There was a standing ovation demanding an encore. The announcer actually had to make an announcement that the concert was over and apologize and say they needed to clear the stage and get ready for the next concert, if they were to start on time. More than sporadic booing followed for a while but died as you could see staff coming on to the stage. Anyway this was good, and now that I think of it perhaps the whole concert wouldn't have provided as much excitement but I could surely have done with another fifteen minutes. My favorite bits were the percussion duos/duels over the driving foundation provided by the drummer and, iirc, the bassist. And also, we secured very good second row, middle, seats for the next concert.

Vijay Iyer Quartet - So this was the next concert and I had nothing better to do so I sat through the soundcheck - what stood out even as they were soundchecking and basically farting about was that Mahanthappa plays what he plays really as if it were second nature, it just flows so naturally and the control he has over the dynamics is also pretty impressive. Anyway, there was only a mild cheer after the announcer introduced the band, and actually throughout the concert attendance fluctuated around sixty percent, as far as I could tell. Iyer, tongue-in-cheek, said "Hi North Sea, did you miss us?" as he had played as a duo, as Raw Materials, with Mahanthappa in 2004 - I was there and that was one hell of a concert I thought at the time, had to pick my jaw up from the floor after every tune - but I don't know whether they had ever played before that.

Anyway, they played Because of Guns (Hey Joe Redux) from Blood Sutra, as the last tune, and as far as I could tell, all the remaining compositions were from the new release, Reimagining - I remember for sure that they played Revolutions, Inertia, Song for Midwood, and The Big Almost. This was the first time I saw Stephan Crump live and I'm not familiar with his work apart from that with Iyer but I really liked the way he played behind Iyer and Mahanthappa, I think his playing resonates well with Iyer's conception - sidenote: he's one of those bassists who tends to sing, hum, along which doesn't distract me in the least but I guess it wasn't even audible further down the hall. The last tune, Because of Guns, was the only one with an easily recognizable structure and meter and most of the rest I had difficulty counting the basic meter let alone the choruses. But they did a good job of going through the compositions with no major screw-ups (not a minor feat to pull this off live, you'll know if you've listened to Reimagining). Marcus Gilmore took one pretty long but nicely built up solo and in general he did a good job of holding things together - with some help from Iyer and Crump, Crump also had a number of features and while he plays fine either way but I prefer his accompaniment.

As for Rudresh and Vijay, they did their stuff and it was certainly good enough for me - I won't try to describe it but I hope that you're familiar with their music or get familiar soon. You can tell when certain things click and the band or the frontmen just push beyond their usual limits or routines and this happened very clearly on the one tune they played as a trio, without Rudresh, and Iyer took a long solo which had some of the best playing I've ever heard from him - mostly long lines which went on and on and on with many twists and turns. If I remember well, Rudresh, too, looked impressed for a while.

Even though this was the first time I heard the material from the new disc and I might have enjoyed the concert a little more if I had been familiar with the compositions in advance, this was one of the highpoints of the festival for me. Really the thing is this is music that one better appreciates with repeated hearing as there's a lot of interaction behind the solos which are worthy of themselves.

Vijay announced after the concert that they had discs with them not available in Europe - and he sold a bunch, but no more. Anyway Rudresh had Mother Tongue with him and even though I had that and the earlier album, Black Water, I got hold of him to say that I really enjoyed the concert and very much dig both of his albums and so on. Asked him about what else is in the pipeline and he told me about a project with the Carnatic saxophone player Kadri Gopalanth (anyone herad them live?) and also said that he'd really like to put out a duo album with Vijay Iyer, Raw Materials, as they've been playing together for about 10 years with no documentation. I picked up Reimagining from Vijay and chatted a little more with them about just general stuff - and felt bad after a while that I was keeping Rudresh from selling his discs! Next time, I'd really like to see Mahanthappa bring his quartet and play his own compositions - and told him so, hope it happens in the near future.

As it happened, I had already spent too much time after the concert since by the time we got to Van Gogh Zaal to see Richard Galliano New York trio, the hall was already packed and they had the doors closed - so you had to wait for people to leave before getting in. We decided to not wait, and I feel lucky to have escaped the wrath of my girlfriend as this was the one concert, along with Ibrahim Ferrer, which she was interested in after seeing the program. And no big deal really as all the fun we had at Matthew Herbert's Plat du Jour, Masada, and Steven Bernstein's Sex Mob concerts on Sunday probably made up for it. Some more on those three and Hermeto Pascoal soon, hopefully.