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Jazz Articles about Joost Lijbaart
Yuri Honing Acoustic Quartet: Heaven On My Mind
by Ian Patterson
So called spiritual-jazz seemed to come out of nowhere with John Coltrane in the mid-1960s. If one jazz musician was the catalyst for the emergence this sub-genre of jazz it was he. Coltrane acolytes Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Charles Lloyd, among others, subsequently took up the mantle. No easier to define than jazz itself, spiritual jazz is hip once again. Not that Yuri Honing openly subscribes to the label, after all this is a musician who has steadfastly chartered ...
Continue ReadingYuri Honing: North Sea Jazz Legendary Concerts
by Ian Patterson
It's fitting that saxophonist, composer and quiet visionary Yuri Honing should be acknowledged as one of the pivotal voices in the history of the Netherland's world-renowned North Sea Jazz festival, described in 1990 by Jazz Times as “the best jazz festival in the world." Honing's first appearance at the NSJF's was in 1995, where he performed with pianist Michiel Bortslap's sextet. Since then, he has played all but three of the last 18 editions, reflecting his status alongside pianist Misha ...
Continue ReadingUnder The Surface: Miin Triuwa
by Ian Patterson
Under The Surface goes Dutch on Miin Triuwa. Well, Old Dutch, to be precise, as it is the language of The Netherlands' early medieval period that provides the grist to singer Sanne Rambags' poetic mill. It is a concept as unexpected as it is original, but three albums into its fascinating journey, the trio co-founded by drummer Joost Lijbaart, guitarist Bram Stadhouders and Rambags is synonymous with experimentation. Its eponymous debut album (Challenge Records, 2017), which embraced silence as another ...
Continue ReadingJoost Lijbaart: Free
by Mark Sullivan
When a drummer/percussionist records a solo album—especially one with the title Free—a potential listener's first expectation would likely involve long, abstract drum solos. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dutch musician Joost Lijbaart took the opportunity offered by Covid-19 downtime to craft a suite of short pieces characterized by a rich variety of timbres (including non percussive instruments such as harmonium and flute) and a frequently contemplative sound world. “Strangers From The Sky" opens the album with ...
Continue ReadingJoost Lijbaart: Free Conversations With Myself
by Ian Patterson
For an artist, making any album is something of a journey—the birthing of ideas, the moulding and sculpting of concepts, the creative trial and error, the emotional highs and lows, and in the end, the satisfaction of a work completed. Dutch drummer/percussionist and composer Joost Lijbaart has travelled that road many times in a thirty-year career, notably in the bands of Yuri Honing and with his own groups, but his first solo album, Free (Challenge Records, 2020) represents an altogether ...
Continue ReadingJoost Lijbaart: Free
by Ian Patterson
As a student in the 1980s, Dutch drummer-percussionist Joost Lijbaart first dreamt of making a solo album, inspired by the examples of Tony Oxley, Pierre Favre, Art Blakey, Max Roach and Jack DeJohnette. A successful recording and touring career with Yuri Honing—and with his own groups—left little time for such a focused project. In 2014, Lijbaart began to explore his long-stored ideas, but the take-off of Under The Surface, an improvisational trio with vocalist Sanne Rambags and multi- instrumentlaist Bram ...
Continue ReadingYuri Honing Acoustic Quartet: Bluebeard
by Ian Patterson
Since the late 1980s, Dutch saxophonist Yuri Honing has steered a singularly eclectic course, bouncing between straight-ahead jazz, the two-guitar Wired Paradise, rock-cum-electronica, and Franz Schubert. This questing musician has never sat still for long. The mesmeric True (Challenge Records, 2012), however, marked the beginning of a more stripped down, meditative acoustic jazz, an aesthetic further refined on the award -winning albums Desire (2015) and Goldbrun (2017)-also on Challenge Records. Bluebeard, inspired by the French folktale of the same name, ...
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