Bert van den Brink

The Bert van den Brink Trio with Rick Margitza: Conversations

by Robert Spencer
December 1, 1999

Conversations is a soulful disc of jazz and jazz/funk. Often the latter comes in unexpectedly: John Coltrane's “Naima" is invested by drummer Hans van Oosterhout with a heavy funk beat, although tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza plays rather conventionally over it. But of course this is no indication that this quartet isn't capable of shifting down to play a ballad: there's Jacques Brel's “La Chanson des Vieux Amants" immediately following “Naima," and played with a keen sincerity and no funk at ...