A Dutch Adventure

Part One | Part Two

Almost another decade passes, and I'm now considered by some to be a fully fledged musician/ writer/ photographer, my history catalogued in books and on recordings, even making it into the odd critics poll. Invited to Vancouver Expo '86 (the first Vancouver Jazz Festival), regularly performing music with David Prentice and David Lee in a collective trio often with other friends and guests, and privileged to perform with a number of the most portentous improvisers on the planet. Time to take stock, a reality check, a look back at the heroes that mapped out this route; Sidney Bechet, John Coltrane and Steve Lacy. Better look out! … and then one day in the spring of 1986 the telephone rings. "Would you like to join Des Sez Winden (The Six Winds) on a tour of Holland?", the voice on the other end inquires. A Dutch based saxophone sextet which includes all the horns from bass saxophone to sopranino.

I arrived in Eindhoven, a town in the south of Holland, at the end of April. The sextet was to gather there for four days of intense rehearsals, to take place at the Amnesty International Centre. Quite to my liking, although there is some discomfort at the thought of performing with five players that are strangers to me. This is amplified by the fact of previously being in control of my musics' destiny within the context of my own band, and doubts as to whether six saxophonists of such diverse styles could indeed become one voice (unit). I had been invited to play E-flat sopranino saxophone. Dies Le Duc (soprano), Paul Termos (alto), John Tchicai (tenor), Ad Peijnenburg (baritone) and Klaas Hekman (bass), and that's it — four Dutchmen, a Dane and a Canadian, about to try to develop enough interesting music to perform ten concerts in fifteen days. It seems that Lol Coxhill has recommended me for this position.

Mostly my reputation (such as it was) in the prior ten years had been as an improviser, and listening to the music of the 1985 Six Winds tour on cassette, I had assumed this to be the situation into which I would be entering. Imagine my surprise when reams of charts, as thick as a telephone directory, with many beyond my academic knowledge, were produced. The tension of this confrontation destroyed my embouchure in very short order. Still, the sun is shining, and I have not visited Europe so many times that its natural old beauty cannot still charm me. And soon I have the comradeship and the encouragement of Dies Le Duc and Klaas Hekman. We became quite a social trio as the time passed by, with me as the visitor, invited on several occasions into their private lives. The Le Duc family live in the small town of Meliskerke, and Klaas Hekman's community house is in the city of Rotterdam.

May 3rd the tour begins. Ready or not we pile into the mini-bus and set out across the flat Dutch countryside. My first windmill appears in the landscape and I search hopefully around for some sign of Don Quixote, but only the violent slashes of (red/yellow) colour interrupt the (green/brown) flatness. Soon in detail this transforms into acre upon acre of beautiful tulips.

The schedule starts with a bang. Two concerts, afternoon and evening, in Utrecht at the Cafe 'Thoogt, then on to Rotterdam to a bar with the wonderful name of Thelonious. There is much doubt as to the appreciation of the audience, and indeed the music is very nervous and tense, with so much concentration on reading the scores correctly there is little chance to relax and improvise. I am told by a listener that the avant garde is old fashioned. So soon!? All is not lost though, as two friends from a past visit to Holland — Frans Schellekens and Erik Vanden Berg, who now works for de Volkskrant, one of Holland's major newspapers — have arrived to interview me. The article appeared in the next issue and partially ensured some success (attendance-wise) for the upcoming concerts. At this point, perhaps three of the fifteen pieces are a complete success. Chernobyl has occurred, so cows are removed from the radiated pastures to protect the milk, and spinach has become a vegetable that is no longer edible. Obviously it's time to retire to the country house of the Le Duc family, reassess the situation, drink a little wine and learn to read the music with more flair.

My visit to the village of Meliskerke turns out to be most opportune. As one will already realise, when a foreign visitor appears in a small community, their presence does not go unnoticed. May 5th, the day in question, is the day that the article appeared in de Volkskrant, complete with my photo. Fame at last. And to enlarge the impact of my visit to this village, it is also the day that the Canadian troops liberated Holland in the second world war. The holiday celebrations have brass bands in the street, a concert at the community centre and the Le Duc family generosities all combining into a wonderful feeling, and myself not knowing that the rest of the visit would open up into a fine experience.

Information pertaining to the Chernobyl disaster rapidly consumes the media, and American paranoia follows me across the ocean. Wynton Marsalis, Albert King, Kenny Burrell and the Manhattan Transfer have cancelled their upcoming engagements in Europe due to radiation and terrorism. I myself feel quite fine. If only the headaches (real or imagined) would go away. The tour developed in a fine manner with a concert at the Kroller Moller museum, a wonderful performance space, to Eindhoven at the Grand Cafe Berlage, Ad Peijnenburg's home base, The Centre for New Music in Middleburg to participate in a three day festival, up north to the cheese town of Alkmar in the Provadya theatre and then finally to the pinnacle of the tour, BimHuis in Amsterdam. Not completed but feeling somewhat that way. Maarten Altena explained the large audience. "They just love saxophone bands in Amsterdam". The response is most gratifying. There was, the next day, an attempt to record the sextet in a studio, but the bulk of the material for the record ("De Zes Winden - Live At The Bimhuis And More" - BVHAAST 064) was to come from that wonderful night in Amsterdam. One more concert in Eindhoven, outdoors at a city celebration of some kind, and then to really complete the tour we head south to the Belgian town of Kortrijk, close to the French border, to perform in the town celebrations of Sinksen Feesten (Whitsuntide). One of the three concerts with an electro-funk band called the Simple Tones. And quite suddenly it's all over. Now the memories have become quite distant. John Tchicai and I have both celebrated our birthdays on this tour. I heard a giant wind organ on the promenade of a Dutch seaside town. Rode bicycles through the countryside and the cobbled streets. Played in a Rotterdam street band with Klaas Hekman, Jos Valster and Coen Aalbers. Drank Trappist beer in Belgian pubs. And I still have yet to see the black tulip.

This all sounds somewhat romantic, the notion of the musician traveling through foreign lands to the envy of all. But of course there is the loneliness of the separation from one's family, sleeping in multitudes of strange beds and houses, the physical body missing the pleasures of food not from a restaurant kitchen, and the inability to converse with a full vocabulary due to the differences of language. I must thank these five European players for making the experience one of consequence, and especially Ad Peijnenburg, for without him the concert bookings, the transportation and the accommodation would have been a nightmare. It's hard to imagine the amount of pre-tour work that is required, so next time a band plays in your home town, think of the one who thought of the idea. I think of Ad.

By the end of that first tour my reading skills had increased 1000%. My tenure with the Six Winds ended with a tour of Canada in 1988 which resulted in the recording "Elephants Can Dance" (Sackville 3041).

The Six Winds
Japan Tour 2002
Komoro - Volume 1 - Ohrai Records JMCK 8002
Maihama - Volume 2 - Ohrai Records JMCK 8003
Mariette Rouppe van der Voort (sopranino), Dies le Duc (soprano), Kazutoki Umezu (alto), Andrew White (tenor), Ad Peijnenburg (baritone), Klaas Hekman (bass).

http://members.chello.nl/a.peijnenburg

Six Winds	Paul Hoeffler photo

The history of The Six Winds, — originally The Four Winds, one of the earliest improvising saxophone quartets in Europe — began in 1976 under the leadership of baritone saxophonist Ad Peijnenburg, and continued until 1984 when he decided that it should include the complete range of all six saxophones, conceivably forming the first saxophone sextet in jazz and improvised music. In the years since, the format has remained the same with the nucleus of the group being four Dutch musicians, complimented with foreign guests, making it into an international ensemble. The "locals" in this current ensemble include three regulars with baritone saxophonist Ad Peijnenburg and bass saxophonist Klaas Hekman being the staunch bottom end since its conception, and soprano saxophonist Dies le Duc joining the group a few years later. The newcomer is sopranino saxophonist Mariette Rouppe van der Voort.

Much of the success of the Six Winds, on many levels including the thankless task of organizing tours, is due to Peijnenburg, who apart from this ensemble is given to working in duet with a variety of musicians who he invites to join him in Holland for projects. Included are drummers Thebe Lipere, Louis Moholo and Han Bennink, saxophonist Lol Coxhill, the eclectic Billy Jenkins, Butch Morris, and bassist William Parker. Examples of Peijnenburg in duet include "And other stuff" - FMRCD75-0101 with percussionist Steve Hubback, and on a visit to New York in January 2004 he recorded a duet CD with William Parker titled "Brooklyn Calling" - Dino CD32004. On these two recordings he also plays sopranino saxophone.

To specialize in the bass saxophone is in itself an unusual and likely unique idea. Rotterdam resident Klaas Hekman has chosen this path for the past twenty-five years and is undeniably 'the' master of this instrument. His beginnings, nearly thirty years ago, as a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in the Hague are surprisingly on flute. His destiny however was ensured at a 1980 meeting in London with Lol Coxhill, when he saw a bass saxophone in a music shop. He was fascinated by this enormous instrument, purchased it and the rest is, as the expression goes, history. Over the ensuing years his illustrious portfolio has included events with large saxophone ensembles, theatre productions, dance music from Surinam, and in more recent years collaborations with numerous players including trumpeter Roy Campbell, and with Intermission, a music project for three double basses and one bass saxophone: Hideji Taninaka, William Parker and Wilbert de Joode on the double basses. Intermission has also performed with the English guitar legend Derek Bailey, pianist Chris Burn and (electronic) composer Gilius van Bergeijk. A recording from 2004 (Yolo - Strotbrock 501) presents him solo, illustrating the brilliance of his playing. Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune wrote: "How one man can produce so much thunderous sound from so unwieldy an instrument almost defies comprehension. But Hekman's solos proved so majestic in scope, searing in tone and coherence in structure as to represent self-contained artistic statements in their own right."

Soprano saxophonist Dies le Duc was my most intimate companion in my years with the ensemble. From him I learnt how the structure of the music functioned, how to deal with the complexities of the arrangements. He is not only a distinct soloist but also a superb composer and orchestra leader. His projects, like those of Hekman, display a most personal concept and range through theatre, dance and the use of natural sounds found outdoors at market places, harbour docks, bell towers, the "legendary" barrel organ, even a performance utilizing the amplified sound of boiling water. An imagination far beyond the norm.

My replacement on sopranino, and the most recent "local" is Mariette Rouppe van der Voort, a classically trained musician who has a history with saxophonist Ab Baars (see Two & Threes), and played with De Volharding and Hoketus, orchestra's that concentrate on the music of new modern composers.(original initiated by Louis Andriessen) In her own ensemble, De Rouppe Group, she works with, among others, the British piano player Veryan Weston and the Belgian trumpet player Bart Maris. This group is playing improvised music based on compositions of Cage, Kagel, Kurtag, Cowell and Rouppe van der Voort.

The two "international" additions in this period are Japanese altoist Kazutoki Umezu and tenorist Andrew White. Umezu whose playing benefits from his experience in jazz, rock, blues, world music and traditional music from Japan and Korea, has performed with a variety of players from all over the world as wide ranging as Mal Waldron, David Murray, Peter Brötzmann, William Parker, George Lewis, John Zorn, Marc Ribot and Tom Cora, and even B.B. King. White is perhaps best known for his love of John Coltrane's music (836 transcriptions), with a startling discography of 42 recordings, an autobiography, and theory and exercise books. His performing experience is also kaleidoscopic with tenures alongside James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Weather Report and Julius Hemphill.

The music on these two CDs bring back fond memories and the realization that there is a very definite style to the ensemble. Although it has been seventeen years since our last encounter the recognizable character that had existed, even in the early days, is intact, and has become something of a signature style. There exists within this wide grouping of saxophones the opportunity to create elaborate orchestral arrangements, to utilize the character of each of these very distinctive horns, and perhaps most importantly the individual voices and compositional abilities of each of the players.

With each project, usually a tour, the program is always new, which not only presents a fresh challenge to the players, but allows, because of the time gap between each gathering, the possibility to evolve a repertoire of some variety. A repertoire that closely reflects the musicians' personal characters, giving the music a somewhat peculiar personality, not quite jazz, perhaps missing the lazy eighths, but permitting a quirky identity to imbue this fine music. The compositions benefit greatly from the detailed arrangements, often having signals integrated among the improvisation that introduce the next forward action.

On these two CDs from their summer tour of Japan in 2002 the compositional chores are democratically shared, with two compositions by Dies le Duc, one by Mariette Rouppe van der Voort who also contributes an arrangement of "Ann Street" by Charles Ives, one of the two non-originals — the other being the Django Reinhardt standard "Nuages-Segaun". Andrew White, Ad Peijnenburg, Kazutoki Umezo all have two apiece, and Klaas Hekman one. This allows for a wide spectrum of ideas and is important to the character of the music, a character that encompasses the fun — as the audience response illustrates — of some funky humour, the occasional exploration of theatrical devices, even to the extent of circus-like vamps, and ultimately a music that has all the qualities necessary for it to be described as unique.