Programmes
HIs Master's CHoice
Featuring Frank Carlberg
february 2011- december 2012
HIs Master's CHoice
Featuring Jacob ter Veldhuis
february 2011 - december 2012
HIs Master's CHoice
featuring Louis Andriessen
november 2011
Avonturen
september 2008 -june 2010
Clazz In Zeeland/Delta Suite
on request
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The Clazz Ensemble and its composers mix with the top.
(Jazzflits- Jaap Lüdeke 2009)
Classical music meets Jazz music in a fascinating balance.
(Frank Huser, 2009)
Music that is forever raising questions as befits high-level art.
(Financieel Dagblad – Hans Dijkstal, 2009)
A contemporary repertoire merging idioms from both worlds in a natural manner.
(Trouw – Armand Serpenti, 2009)
Smooth synthesis.
(Jazzism, Bert Vuijsje, 2009)
It goes without saying that nine windplayers guarantee hurricane force on a regular basis, but the repertoire also allows for experimenting with smaller formations. The Clazz Ensemble illustrates how only an excellent technique can stick to the proper emotions. (Jazzenzo - Rinus van der Heijden, 2009)
HIS MASTER'S CHOICE
featuring Louis Andriessen
Special guests:
Cristina Zavalloni – voice (Italy)
Monica Germino – violin (USA)
A unique musical and visual journey through the work of Holland’s most well known contemporary composer Louis Andriessen
In 2010 Louis Andriessen scored major successes in New York's Carnegie Hall. In His Master's Choice he is responsible for a wonderful and exciting program combining lots of improvisation with existing pieces and new music specially composed for the CLAZZ Ensemble. Everyone knows that Louis has always loved jazz. For this program he has
re-written a number of his compositions for the CLAZZ Ensemble’s line-up. Inspired by these musicians, he has expanded the role of improvisation in these works. The Family (music for the eponymous 1973 movie by Lodewijk de Boer) has been updated and renamed The Family Revisited. Also on the program is M is for Man, Music, Mozart (with accompanying film by Peter Greenaway) featuring Louis’ muse, the Italian singer Cristina Zavalloni. Further with Cristina, but also including the American violinist Monica Germino, the poetic piece Passeggiata in tram in America e ritorno (1999) with a text by Dino Campana and Y Despues (a poem by Garcia Lorca). Also on the program is the very jazzy, boogie woogie-inspired work On Jimmy Yancey (1973) and That's going on in Vietnam(1972). Monument for Robert Graettinger(2011) completes the program and is especially written for the Clazz Ensemble.
Louis Andriessen about improvisation
Line up tour November 2011
The Clazz Ensemble:
Bas Wiegers conductor
Dick de Graaf, Werner Janssen, Nils van Haften, Arno Bornkamp: reeds Charlie Biggs, Frank Anepool, Gerard Kleijn: trumpet and flugelhorn Vincent Veneman, Dominic Sierat: trombone
Jan Harshagen: french horn
Kris Goessens: piano/keyboards
Guus Bakker: bass guitar
Joost Kesselaar: drums
HIS MASTER'S CHOICE
featuring Frank Carlberg (USA)
Nostalgic memories of bygone times! Shards of Fellini, tumbling clowns and colorful circus acts transformed into today’s music.
For this program, written especially for the CLAZZ Ensemble, Frank Carlberg has let himself be inspired by the way the music from his youth must have sounded, when he went to the circus, watched parades and visited amusement parks. How the bands and orchestras from his past sounded exactly, and what kind of repertoire they played, he cannot remember. But that might just be a good thing, because in his compositions, with titles such as March, Rat Race, The Chase, Bill's Big Hat and Federico on Broadway, his rich fantasy feeds on his musical memories of the circus parade through the city, with clowns tumbling over each other, galloping horses, the graceful ringmaster and juggling acrobats.
Later the films of Federico Fellini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alfred Hitchcock further fed this fascination. Compositions by kindred spirit and important new talent Nicholas Urie (USA) and by a composer much admired by Mr. Carlberg, the recently deceased George Russell (USA), complete the program.
As a composer Carlberg has a unique style. His music is best described as Stravinsky meets Ellington, or Gil Evans meets Ives. A strong influence from American and European classical music is combined with a rich sense of the modern jazz tradition. The result is completely up-to-date, authentic and fits the CLAZZ Ensemble like a glove. For the soloists there is plenty of room.
The Finnish-born Carlberg has been internationally active as a jazz pianist and composer for 25 years and lives currently in New York. As leader of The Frank Carlberg Quintet, the Tivoli Trio and The Frank Carlberg Big Band, as a sideman with Steve Lacy, Bob Brookmeyer and Kenny Wheeler, among others. As a composer he has written music for big band, small ensembles, symphony orchestras and dance companies. The fact that he succeeded composer Bob Brookmeyer as composition professor at the renowned New England Conservatory in Boston gives an idea of his high status in American music.
The Amsterdam based Clazz Ensemble is quite a revelation! Superb musicianship, excellent ensemble playing and fresh programming. The Clazz Ensemble continues in the paths paved by groundbreaking artists such as George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre, Charles Mingus and Gunther Schuller that often exist at the borders and crossroads of jazz, classical as well as folkloric traditions. However, this tradition is also about iconoclasm and the Clazz Ensemble has developed attitudes and directions all its own.
Frank Carlberg
The Clazz Ensemble:
Paul van de Feen, Dick de Graaf, Nils van Haften, Arno Bornkamp reeds, Charlie Biggs, Frank Anepool, Gerard Kleijn trumpet and flugelhorn, Vincent Veneman, Koen Kaptijn trombone, Kris Goessens piano/keyboards, Guus Bakker double bass/bass guitar, Joost Kesselaar drums
HIS MASTER'S CHOICE
featuring Jacob ter Veldhuis
Dutch composer JacobTV samples pop culture and gives It a melody.- New York Times
Berlusconi washes his hands in innocence and proudly admits to his deeds, securities analysts in despair, Quincy Jones speaks admiringly of Michael Jackson after his death. Prostitutes complain about their pimp.
Tragedy turned into cool art. – Volkskrant
His Master's Choice features new and existing compositions by Jacob ter Veldhuis, also known as JacobTV. In addition, new work by composers admired by him, specially selected for this program. All the compositions are inspired by spoken or written text. This is a technique that JacobTV applies in a totally unique way and which has brought him worldwide fame. You often hear snatches of spoken word as a kind of speech-melody interwoven in his work, or sound bites from America, the country that has so fascinated him. This method is the common thread throughout the program. JacobTV is one of Holland’s most successful contemporary composers. He is sometimes called ‘the Andy Warhol of music’. The Wall Street Journal wrote: ‘In comparison with JacobTV's challenging work, hip-hop seems boring’.
In the first half of the concert, composers admired by JacobTV: Guus Jansen (music with the ‘moving’ poem Monster by Tonnus Oosterhoff), Martin Fondse (inspired by Poetica by the Brazilian poet Vincius de Moraes) and Marco C. Brown (with a composition in which the voice of Quincy Jones can be heard in a speech about Michael Jackson shortly after his death, titled Q on M).
Further, existing work by Jacob himself with the rugged Pimpin and Cheesecake, based on a curious announcement by Dexter Gordon. The texts and images will be projected during the concerts via spectacular video graphics made by visual artists Jan Boiten and Kristien Kerstens.
After the break a Sneak Preview of the video opera THE NEWS. This is a nonfiction video opera about our times via the news. An unending ‘work in progress’, based on original footage from the international media. Each performance of THE NEWS is a premiere, as the work is constantly updated. This also means that this opera is forever doomed to remain unfinished, because news is endless .....
JacobTV is one of the most intriguing and engaging European composers of today. TV’s music is emotionally direct, and he possesses an authentic lyrical gift - Stephen Eddins, Allmusic USA
The daily news on TV is what you might call infotainment, with a fast and over-excited delivery, repeated endlessly. The material for the video opera THE NEWS consists of revealing one-liners by newsreaders, celebrities, economists, politicians, priests, soldiers and civilians, who discuss and comment on politics, the credit crisis, God, global warming, war and peace but also trivia. THE NEWS casts a new light on our current events and, by literally zooming in on the voices and faces of the talking heads of commentators and their guests, THE NEWS attempts to zoom in on the meaning of words, thoughts and feelings of our time. It contains a non-moralistic argument about our time as it is colored by the news, with layered tragicomedy, and using the credit crisis that has gripped the world since September 2008 as a connecting theme.
The opening, Broken Dreams, is based on the sermon of a fat, hysterical television evangelist. He concludes his sermon about doomsayers, saying: Look at our world: broken finances, broken marriages, broken government, broken young people, broken dreams, broken churches, and bam! A metaphor for our time? For us it’s the starting point for an investigation into all that is broken: in Small Pop, a feeble recovery, thanks to the investment of billions of tax dollars, the false demagoguery of Berlusconi in Corrotto, a shocking testimony of a war veteran from Afghanistan in White Flag, a tragic Obama with his final election speech: ‘we are one day away from changing America’, forever doomed to be one day away from the change he promised, and the response of Tea Party Cowboy Hank Williams, Jr.: ‘I'll keep my freedom, my guns, my money and my religion and you can keep the change!’ And it’s not only Americana; THE NEWS is about the whole world. A parade of desperate and pedantic talking heads draws past us in an almost irrational world of opinions in a rudderless and fearful time.
The underlying, unifying element in the opera is of course the music, because music can express the indescribable and yet comment on words and images. The score is based on the technique of speech-melody: the melody and rhythm of the spoken word is the leitmotif that is translated into music. The grooving arias, chorales, recitatives, instrumental passages and funky divertimento are composed in a typically JacobTV accessible post-minimal/avant-pop hedonistic style, sometimes harking back to the classics, from Palestrina via Bach to the heavens, but also rich with spontaneous improvisation.
The Clazz Ensemble:
Bas Wiegers conductor
Dick de Graaf, Nils van Haften, Arno Bornkamp, Werner Janssen reeds,
Charlie Biggs, Frank Anepool, Gerard Kleijn trumpet and flugelhorn, Vincent Veneman, Koen Kaptijn trombone, Kris Goessens piano/keyboards, Guus Bakker double bass/bass guitar, Joost Kesselaar drums
Video: Jan Boiten, Kristien Kerstens
Animations: Tonnus Oosterhoff
Sound: Chris Wee
November 2011 tour His Master'' Choice
featuring Louis Andriessen