ICP Orchestra (photo: Francesca Patella)

I don’t think there’s a book that paints such a thrillingly accurate and vivid account of a particular musical community and aesthetic as Kevin Whitehead’s New Dutch Swing, a masterful study that focuses largely on the deeply curious golden era of jazz and improvised music in Amsterdam during the 1960s-1990s. I’d already been sucked in by that music when the book was published in 1998, but Whitehead’s writing provided historical and aesthetic context that greatly bolstered and illuminated by understanding of that period, especially the creative circle around pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink. The Amsterdam scene remains vibrant and now it’s more international than ever, and its younger denizens have sought to stake out its own sonic turf in the decades since the years covered in his book. But I can’t deny that older period remains an artistic zenith for me, when the players inventively interrogated jazz tradition, simultaneously turning it all upside down—questioning it while demonstrating a profound understanding and deep ardor for its fundamental values. The way Mengelberg and Bennink’s ICP subverted tradition embodied one of jazz’s essential qualities, as they refused to a allow hallowed reverence for the past get in the way of pushing the practice forward.

While many of those veteran practitioners are still active, most figures in the younger generation have seemed uninterested in pursuing similar procedures—particularly in composition--which is certainly a healthy attitude in establishing themselves on the basis of their own merits. At the same time, I can’t help but wish we could hear what the current community might do with some of those aesthetic ideas. That’s why I’ve been so knocked out and excited by Play the (Casco), an album that dropped last summer by the Xavier Pamplona Septet. There’s no one in the ensemble by that name. The project is led by veteran bassist Raoul van der Weide, who, though Dutch, was born in France. In fact, as Whitehead notes in his perceptive album review for Point of Departure, none of the musicians were born in the Netherlands, although van der Weide, drummer George Hadow, and reedist Michael Moore have all been on the scene for decades. Moore, of course, has been part of some of Amsterdam’s greatest bands including the ICP Orchestra, Clusone 3, Available Jelly, and Jewels & Binoculars. Most of the band, though, is younger: Polish pianist Marta Warelis, Israeli bass clarinetist Ziv Taubenfeld, Scottish trumpeter Alistair Payne, and Italian baritone saxophonist Giuseppe Doronzo. While van der Weide brings in a pair of tunes for the recording, the majority of the material comes from Amsterdam’s past, yet I was unfamiliar with a lot it, including a pair of pithy compositions by trombonist Bert Koppelaar, who worked the bassist and pianist Guus Janssen in Muzikanten Punt Uit Orkest, an ensemble I’d never heard of until this album crossed my path, as well as ICP Orchestra and Mengelberg’s Tentet.

The album art and plenty of visual work on van der Weide’s website, reveals his skill as a collagist, but he applies that discipline sonically as well, another nice connection to that old Dutch sound. You can hear it on the joyfully rambunctious opener, Koppelaar’s saucy cha-cha-meets-swing mash-up “Hawkwind,” with Haddow and the leader not only switching rhythmic feels, but also tripping things up, while Koppelaar’s epic, multi-partite “Ambitus Cycle” is an exhilarating pomo trip that jubilantly careens from jacked-up circus music to smoldering Ellingtonian balladry (with Payne’s garrulous, pungent improvisation effectively laced with sustained prepared piano drones by Warelis) to an striated, circular breathing baritone sax improvisation by Doronzo to a spiritual parlor room-style to a split-personality march-swing passage with great left-handed piano interjections and a phenomenal Warelis solo….you get the picture. Not all of the segments flow into one another, but the ideas come so fast and furious, and so satisfyingly so, it hardly matters, with a wonderfully mercurial spectrum of freedom and precision. The group can also move beyond that vintage aesthetic, as they do on “Improvisatie,” an all-horn sound excursion both lush and astringent.

I don’t know the provenance of an untitled ballad by cellist Fred Katz, but it provides another lovely facet, with a sublimely beautiful Moore solo over relaxed piano and bass accompaniment, while Janssen’s “Koto À Gogo” gives its opening moments to abstract sounds from Taubenfeld and Warelis (with more sliding preparations) before Haddow drops a tough break beat and the rest of the ensemble chatters over it, the other horns gradually getting at the pithy theme, albeit in chaotic company. There’s also “Jo-Jo Jive,” which collides a certain Mingus flair with the stick-in-the-spokes ethos of Mengelberg, whom Janssen replaced in ICP (check it out below). On “Luce nel Scuro” the group irons out some of the sprawling dramedy Tristan Honsinger usually imparted into such cracked tarantellas—a version by the cellist’s string trio In the Sea on its 2018 album Forks and Spoons (Creative Sources) is a bit more rustic. There are also a couple of numbers by van der Weide, including “Culture Boy,” with a key strain not so subtly related to “Nature Boy,” but the loose agglomeration of voices and a wide-open, ICP-ish section that neatly toggles between chaos and order, give the interpretation its own distinct character, while the band spends most of his tune “Feitenlied” pulling away from the theme, creating that kind of glorious tension that was a defining mark of the older Dutch stuff, but then the rhythm section locks into an irresistible swing pattern with another magnificent solo by Warelis, who is surely the best young keyboardist in the Netherlands. It might not be the most original album out of Amsterdam these days, but it’s among the most pleasurable in the last year or two—and it suggests that the next generation can still glean some clever notions from the local past.

Raoul van der Weide (photo: Peter Gannushkin / downtownmusic.net) / Ab Baars & Joost Buis

In recent months there have also been a slew of terrific releases from those old-school figures, including De Hondemepper (ICP), a wonderful collaboration between Instant Composers Pool and the new music ensemble Nieuw Amsterdams Peil recorded in November of 2018 that reminds us how porous the city’s jazz and contemporary music scenes were between the 1960s-1990s, and like some of the material on the Xavier Pamplona Sextet album, there are pieces that go far back, such as Mengelberg’s multi-partite “Dressoir,” which he composed for Louis Andriessen’s Orkest de Volharding. The version here is magnificent, injecting humor and chaos within a rapidly shifting landscape of composed and open sections that displays a less rigid analog to the compositional strategies Willem Breuker was in the process of exploring in the late 70s. The fusion of the two ensembles is seamless.

Whitehead’s erudite liners note that array of Mengelberg compositions represent numerous threads within his vast oeuvre. The repertoire beautifully reflects hybrid forms explored by Mengelberg over the decades, whether a pair of brief “Conductions” directed by cellist Honsinger or an arrangement of Misha’s “Een Hutje van Gras” by Gerard Bouwhuis of NAP that underlines the needling canon with minimalist brio. There are also readings of material that had a profound impact on Mengelberg: a spry Guus Janssen arrangement of “Cro-Magnon Nights” by Herbie Nichols, Michael Moore’s orchestration of the Dutch pianist’s arrangement of Monk’s “Reflections,” Ab Baars’ nifty interpolation of the Ellington/Strayhorn gem “Depk” as “Pools and Pals,” or a version of his father Karel Mengelberg’s “Trio.” There’s a Russian nesting doll quality in the way these pieces are reimagined or revisited that convey’s ICP’s brilliance at artistic obfuscation. Below you can check out one of Mengelberg’s more notated pieces, “De Purperen Sofa,” replete with an unexpected pan flute part from NAP’s Patricio Wang. As Whitehead writes:

To hear “De Hondemepper” (Dog-Swatter: sexton tasked with shooing dogs from church) or ICP deep tracks from 1990 and 1986, “Vieze en lekkere luchten” and the Purple Sofa suite (à la Guus, exploiting percussionist Bart de Vrees’s bright colors and Bennink’s dark drive) is to confirm that Mengelberg’s serio-comic, natty-anarchic, ugly beautiful archaic modernist music remains elusive and beguiling as ever. Now that he’s gone, we are lucky there are folks who know how to play it right, and are ready to pass that knowledge on. The circle gets wider.

Reedist Baars delves further into Ellington source material on Moods for Roswell (Wig), a lovely new duo album with trombonist Joost Buis. The titular reference to trombonist Roswell Rudd comes from a brief 2017 email message from him to Baars printed inside the package:

Thank you guys Joost & Ab for reaching out
Ring,Zing,Bing,King,DingaLing Dong Song
Nothing like Ellingtonia anywhere anytime
Especially clarinet & trombone! the way U2 do it
Love slipsliding all the way (&Ig2)
Rozzy & Vern

Rudd toured and recorded with the long-running Ab Baars Trio (with Wilbert de Joode and Martin Van Duynhoven), a collaboration captured by the terrific 2001 album Four, and Buis also recorded with the trio, a collaboration captured by the terrific 2011 album Kinda Dukish, which featured a couple of the same pieces and operated in a similar fashion: stretching out and abstracting various Ellington themes. And Buis certainly carries on Rudd’s gutbucket lineage, although the duo performances are sleek and refined. In each of the ten pieces—with Baars alternating between clarinet, tenor saxophone, and shakuhachi—the various Ellington/Strayhorn kernels are hidden or disguised, but eventually revealed, offering a beguiling practice built upon the sublime interactivity between the two players. They inhabit the tunes—mostly lesser known ones—in a profound, intimate way, allowing their rapport to shine brightly and exploring remote nooks and crannies. It’s all very Dutch, in that same recombinant manner. “Two Ways,” which you can hear below, is based upon one my all-time Ellington faves, “Wig Wise,” from Money Jungle, and the pair toy around with its melody, untangling it, pulling away from it, and only definitively latching on to in the final half-minute. The indelible tunes are ancillary, but the real joy comes from the conversational bond this duo has built over time.

Last, but by no means least, is a wonderful duo album by Guus and Wim Janssen called Homemade Music (Geestgronden), released last October. The title refers to the fact that the recording documents a house concert from March of 2019, and the feel is attractively cozy. Guus, of course, filled Mengelberg’s piano chair in ICP about five years ago, and while he’s not the prankster Misha was, he shares the same versatility and curiosity, an abiding love for many of the same precursors like Monk, Nichols, and Ellington, and he’s also a serious composer of notated music. The Janssen brothers tackle tunes by Nichols, Lee Konitz (for whom the pianist has a deep affinity), and the overlooked Dutch composer and reedist Paul Termos—the other eight selections are Guus originals (although “April” is really just a tweak of “I’ll Remember April), most of which he’s featured on previous albums. The brothers have played together for many years, so their almost telepathic connection is no surprise, whether buoyantly essaying the Nichols classic “House Party Starting,” with a decidedly Monk-ish intro, or the deliriously cross-cutting staccato rhythms on “PF,” with Wim creating a virtual symphony from a crash cymbal. One particular delight is the loose atmosphere, with the musicians ripping into tunes they’ve played many times in different contexts. They pull out new threads, take fresh detours, and seem to make new discoveries, drawing up a familiar language and literature that provide both comfort and inspiration. Obviously, Monk and Nichols are bebop titans, but it’s increasingly rare to encounter musicians who’ve both fully internalized their ideas and put their own stamp upon the music—a hallmark of the Dutch players from this older generation. Below you can check out “Azuur,” a lurching, twisting marvel that toys endlessly with time while also plying harmonically tart, rapid-fire piano figures that sweep across the sound field like a drunken dervish.

Today’s playlist:

Mourning [A] BLKstar, The Garner Poems (Electric Cowbell)

Klein, cc EP (no label)

Carla Bozulich, Quieter (Constellation)

Quatuor Bozzini, Gyula Csapó: Déjà? Kojâ? (Collection QB)

Byron Westbrook, Confluence Patterns (Umor Rex)

Old Dutch Swing