Saturday April 27th, 2024, 8:00 PM – Jazz Piano. Pianist Sullivan Fortner (1986) grew up in New Orleans. He is one of the many jazz musicians for whom church music is one of the earliest sources of inspiration. His mother is a choir conductor – Sullivan climbed onto the organ bench at the age of seven. When he spreads his wings in a later phase, things go fast. At the age of 24 he plays in the quintet of trumpeter Roy Hargrove. In 2015 he made his recording debut as a leader: Aria (Impulse! Records). Solo Game (2023, Artwork Records) is his fourth album. His choice of repertoire shows his roots in the jazz tradition. In addition – and at the same time – he profiles himself with new routes in unknown territory. Thelonious Monk’s I Mean You is on the 2015 album Aria. In a quartet line-up with sax, bass and drums, Fortner immediately adapts the theme to his will, including a metric shift. The improvisations include some cunningly packaged Monk quotes. The ‘groupiness’ content of the quartet is high. Duke Ellington receives a tribute on the album Moments Preserved (2018). In a Sentimental Mood also gets a Fortner treatment, but the mood is retained in the theme. The B part of the form, the bridge, contains a remarkable reversal: the melody shifts to the bass, while the – idiosyncratic – accompaniment sounds in the high register. An ‘orchestral’ effect that we do not often hear in jazz piano. This raises the question: why, in jazz, are the lower registers on a keyboard instrument used so little for melodic functions? Cute (Solo Game) offers a quick change in textures, including a contrapuntal left hand. This is not at the expense of clarity. A musical and pianistic tour de force. In total you will hear eight pieces, and an interview with Fortner. Solo Game contains 2 CDs. The first one features piano work. On CD 2 we enter a new universe. Fortner taps from other musical sources and goes all out instrumentally. In addition to piano, he plays Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3, Moog, Celesta, Triangel, Chimes, Drums, Egg Shaker, Mongolian Gong and other percussion material. A hand clapper also joins. Those pieces are outside this programme. Yes, he’s really something, that Sullivan.

Saturday April 20th, 2024, 5:00 PM – House of Hard Bop. Jazz has many legendary tandems and ensembles: Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie (Bird & Dizz), the quintets of Miles Davis with John Coltrane, The Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond, and closer to home, the Jacobs brothers with Rita Reys. The Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet also wrote history in just two and a half years of existence in the mid-1950s. Los Angeles, autumn 1953. Drummer Max Roach is given the opportunity to put together a quintet – a long series of bookings is guaranteed by the impresario. Roach brings 23-year-old trumpeter Clifford Brown over from the East Coast, where Brown has now proven himself in the Art Blakey Quintet (A Night At Birdland). This sowed the seeds for one of the most important hard bop formations of the 1950s. Brown is able to combine super-fast melodic lines with a clear, warm sound – something that not every trumpet player has. In addition, he is an inexhaustible source of musical ideas and a talent for composition. After a number of successful recordings, recorded on the West Coast, “Brownie” and Roach performed at Capitol Studios in New York in 1955. With Harold Land on tenor, Richie Powell on piano and bassist George Morrow. The result is Study in Brown – a title with a nod to modern painting. Brown, Land and Powell also prove their compositional qualities. * Pianist Powell is responsible for Jacqui, a piece with a ‘tricky’ form, a fascinating and clear percussion story of 36 bars and a surprise at the end. * Clifford Brown’s short and concentrated Swinging takes place in a dazzling up tempo that Powell always seems to have some difficulty with. * Lands End – of course by the tenorist – opens with a rich unison theme in a minor key. Relaxed pace. The immediately appealing melodic theme character is continued in all solos. How beautiful things are possible within a standard form with simple harmonies… During the band’s stay in Chicago at the end of 1955, tenorist Harold Land received bad news from his home front in San Diego. He immediately travels to California, and not much later decides to say goodbye to the road and stay on the West Coast from now on. His successor at CliffordBrown/Max Roach will be…Sonny Rollins! In early 1956 the band – with Rollins – was in the studio for the recording of Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street. * Cole Porter’s What is This Thing Called Love opens with an atmospheric one-minute intro. In Cherokee – from the album Study in Brown – they did something similar. An effectively built-up tension. * The popular song Love is a Many Splendored Thing gets a sharp tempo acceleration compared to most other versions. And the rhythmic-metric shifts also pull the theme far away from its origin. * I’ll Remember April shows a variation of the long, ‘static’ intro of the first song. Here too, a minute of warm-up before the theme emerges. You will also hear from this album Powell’s Prances, Time (both pieces by Richie Powell), The Scene is Clean and Gertrude’s Bounce (also by Powell). Basin Street is the only Brown/Roach album with Rollins. It is one of the band’s last recordings, and also a highlight. The album was rated by critic Scott Yanow as “… one of the 17 Essential Hard Bop Recordings.” House of Hard Bop – Eric Ineke photo: Clifford Brown (left) and Max Roach

Vocal Jazz on Saturday 13 April at 18:00 CET looks at the career of Sarah Vaughan. Sarah Vaughan was no ordinary American girl. As a teenager, she performed as a singer and pianist at the Piccadilly Club in her hometown of Newark, New Jersey. At the age of eighteen she took part in an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater in New York. She sang Body and Soul – not the easiest song – and she won. That earned her an engagement at the Apollo Theater and a job with the orchestra of  Earl Hines.

Intrigued by the plans for our new channel World of Jazz? The launch on 30th April approaches and plans are getting more concrete.

World of Jazz, the new online radio channel from the Concertzender, starts on April 30. Here you can listen to jazz and world music in all its diversity, 24 hours a day. The new channel works closely with the Dutch jazz and world music sectors and keeps you informed about to the latest news, showcases young talent and broadcasts live performances.