Jazz performance is sometimes compared to a tightrope walk. A dialogue between a horn player and a percussionist, with no piano, guitar or bass to provide the harmonic foundation, is like a tightrope walk without a net. On their recent album “The Duke Book”, a set of duo performances of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn compositions, flugelhorn player Angelo Verploegen and drummer Jasper van Hulten make the risk-taking seem effortless.

The selection of tunes, from the well-known classics “Satin Doll”, “Caravan”, and “Take the “A” Train” to the lesser-known “Blues in Blueprint” and “Smada” from the 1962 Columbia Records album (and audiophile favorite) “Blues in Orbit”, provides a framework for new arrangements and plenty of room for individual expression.

The absence of a piano gives percussionist van Hulten plenty of space to play in an orchestral style and explore the palette of percussive tone colors. Small details like the delicate brush work that opens “Blues in Blueprint”, the Cuban dance rhythm in “Satin Doll”, and the floor toms played like kettle drums in “Come Sunday”, draw the listener into the intimate musical setting.

A hidden gem of atmospheric jazz from the dawn of DSD

Ellington/Tizol’s “Caravan” is recast by Verploegen in a subtle arrangement that delays the appearance of the original theme until nearly the end of the performance. It’s a bravura choice that a less experienced musician wouldn’t have risked. Verploegen plays a flugelhorn made by the Dutch instrument designer Hub van Laar, whose instruments are used by the Dutch trumpet virtuoso Eric Vloeimans. The flugelhorn is pitched in the same key as the trumpet, but possesses a deeper timbre and rounder tone that Verploegen explores in the lyrical passages of “Come Sunday” and “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing”.

Though he’s playing from the Ellington book, Verploegen avoids emulating the characteristic riffs and clichés of Duke’s trumpet soloists. Like many players who came of age in the 1980s, a time when free jazz had retreated to the margins and the “Young Lions” had reintroduced earlier jazz currents into neo-bop repertoire, Verploegen synthesizes a range of stylistic influences. He improvises with great confidence and dexterity, easily meeting the challenge of tracking the chord changes without a backing instrument. If you’re familiar with the pieces, you can “hear” the implied chords beneath Verploegen’s and van Hulten’s solo phrases and duo interplay.

Engineer Jared Sacks’s DSD256 recording positions the two players in the sumptuous reverberant acoustic of MCO, Hilversum.

“The Duke Book” is a delight for audiophiles and highly recommended for all jazz lovers.

Toïs, Angelo Verploegen, Tjitze Vogel, and Bram Wijland: Forbidden Fruit (Turtle Records)

Have you ever searched the NativeDSD website and noticed a checkbox labeled DSD Exclusively available as DSD download (Never available on SACD)? Try clicking on it. What displays is an ever-growing list of albums recorded in DSD, DXD, or analogue transferred direct to DSD, that were never issued on SACD.

“Forbidden Fruit”, a jazz trio album by the group Toïs, consisting of Angelo Verploegen, trumpet and flugelhorn, Tjitze Vogel, standup bass, and Bram Wijland, percussion, was recorded by engineer Bert van der Wolf at the dawn of the DSD era in Doopsgezinde Kerk, Deventer, the Netherlands. The sonics of that venue are known to listeners of Jared Sacks’s classical music SACDs and DSD albums on Channel Records. The spacious acoustic and long reverberation time paints a “glow” around the instruments; trumpet phrases hang in the air; plucked bass notes fill the soundstage, and cymbals shimmer.

The selection of standards by Ellington, Gershwin, Porter and Legrand is balanced by original compositions from Angelo Verploegen and bassist Tjitze Vogel, and a “new standard” from Branford Marsalis.

Duke Ellington‘s “I Got it Bad and That ain’t Good” takes the unexpected approach of a musical argument between trumpet squalls and clattering drum fills. It’s a humorous performance that upends listener expectations. In the Gershwins’ “S’Wonderful” Verploegen dispenses with the verse melody and jumps into a muted trumpet solo on the bridge line, another unexpected revision of a classic standard. The traditional elements of bebop structure are all in place; nimble horn solos; the leader dropping out to showcase the rhythm section; “trading fours”; familiar signposts on the long road from the music’s origin in the early 1940s.

Echoes of pianist-composer Horace Silver reverberate through Verploegen’s striking composition “Brad’s Feast”. Following a well-crafted open horn trumpet solo, guest guitarist Ed Verhoeff spins a silky toned melodic improvisation.

The Cole Porter classic “What is This Thing Called Love?” opens with a dexterous bass solo over fleet brushwork from Bram Wijland, only gradually revealing the familiar contours of the song’s melody. Counterpoint guitar chords give this arrangement foot-tapping rhythmic drive.

A bridge between “Forbidden Fruit” and “The Duke Book” is the Juan Tizol-Duke Ellington composition “Caravan”, which appears on both recordings. I encourage listeners to create a playlist with both versions side by side for ease of comparison. On “Forbidden Fruit”, Verploegen reconceived “Caravan” as a study in restless energy; on “The Duke Book”, he revised that conception into a radically new arrangement. That probing curiosity and drive to experiment in new directions is the measure of a master musician.

Eric Vloeimans: Oliver’s Cinema (Buzz)

A Dutchman, a Belgian and a German walk into a bar…

If it is true that the finest Belgian ale is brewed by contemplative monks, it must follow that the best music is produced by contemplative musicians.

Oliver’s Cinema had its genesis in a visit by Dutch trumpeter Eric Vloeimans to a Belgian bar, where, over a pint of the local, he listened to a CD of accordionist Tuur Florizoone. A duo was quickly formed, then expanded into a trio with the addition of German cellist Jörg Brinkmann. Each of the three players contributed original compositions to assemble a performing repertoire unique to the ensemble. The inclusion of film soundtrack pieces from “Cinema Paradiso” and “Rosemary’s Baby” suggested to Vloeimans a cinema-themed title for the project, which, coincidentally, is an anagram for his name. 

Fourteen short pieces survey a range of moods from the playful to the contemplative, to the elegiac. The album has been described as a ‘soundtrack for imaginary films’ but that shorthand characterization doesn’t really do it justice. The pieces are thoughtfully arranged frameworks on which the players develop melodic improvisations in folk-classical mode: waltz, musette, klezmer, and Near-Eastern themes weave together in a seamless fabric.

The opening piece, Vloeimans’ “Aladdin”, begins with a lilting melody in 4/4/4/5 rhythm played by the cello on plucked strings. Cellist Brinkmann is equally adept carrying a bass line or bowing elegant, legato phrases. The accordion enters, a blend of keyboard and button registers, layering the accompaniment with chords and single-line melodies. Finally we hear the Hub van Laar trumpet that provides Vloeimans with a broad palette for shaping his tone. The facility with which Vloeimans can bend notes suggests that he’s using one of van Laar’s quarter-tone models with the extra valve; but in a video of the group, Vloeimans can clearly be seen playing a three-valve instrument. Perhaps both instruments were used in the recording. 

Oliver’s Cinema is perfect late-night music, best matched with a Belgian abbey ale—triple, of course.

While the album can be enjoyed in shorter or longer listening segments, the whole set is more than equal to the sum of its parts. Bert van der Wolf’s recorded sound projects the ensemble into your listening room in a close perspective appropriate to the intimate mood of the performance, with generous ambience haloing the instruments. The recording venue is not named in the liner notes, but it sounds more like a studio soundstage than a church or concert hall. Low-level details, the occasional click of the accordion keys or breathiness from the trumpet, are audible mostly at higher playback levels.

Eric Vloeimans: Umai (Challenge Jazz)

The familiar comparisons that jazz writers use to describe a musician’s sound are often inadequate to the task. Because there are so many trumpet players who sound more or less like Miles Davis, and piano trios that were inspired by the Bill Evans/Scott LaFaro/Paul Motian Trio, these kinds of comparisons may or may not be useful to communicate the distinctive qualities of a contemporary jazz musician.

Dutch trumpet master Eric Vloeimans manages not to sound exactly like any particular forebear, and that is no small accomplishment. Rather than compare him to his illustrious predecessors, it’s more useful to focus on what makes him different: his compositions. The original works on Umai fall on the lyrical-romantic side of modern European jazz. Fans of Kenny Wheeler and Enrico Rava will not be disappointed by this set of tunes. Vloeimans possesses an impish spirit;

There’s a current of musical humour running through his works that will have listeners tapping their feet and smiling.

Sympathetic support from a multinational rhythm section of Italian bassist Furio di Castro, (the late, great) British pianist John Taylor and American drummer Joe LaBarbera, highlights Vloeimans’ thoughtful and economical solos.

Umai was recorded by Chris Weeda at Studio Leroy in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2000, around the same time as he recorded two other early SACD sessions for Challenge Jazz: Enrico Pieranunzi: Plays the Music of Wayne Shorter and Enrico Pieranunzi: Improvised Forms for Trio. All three albums demonstrated, early in the SACD era, that recording in a well-controlled studio environment in native DSD captured a more natural sound than the recordings from ECM of the same era. The drums, bass, trumpet and piano are all well-positioned in the room and blend harmoniously in a realistic presentation.

A generous 72 minutes of intelligent music makes this release worth a space on the jazz shelf.

More Trumpet Treasures

HRAudio.net reviewer Mark Werlin shared with you 4 reviews of Jazz albums available at NativeDSD, highlighting the players Angelo Verploegen and Eric Vloeimans. Here you will find a few more Trumpet Treasures selected by the NativeDSD staff.

The post Trumpet Treasures appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

SACDs from the Challenge family of labels have brought to greater attention the accomplishments of a younger generation of Dutch musicians. Over the past twenty years, Challenge Jazz, Buzz, and Turtle have released SACDs by players such as trumpeter Eric Vloeimans, pianist Marc van Roon, reeds player Maarten Ornstein, bassists Tony Overwater and Hein van der Gein, and percussionist Wim Kegel.

More recently, high resolution and DSD download vendors have established an important new platform for distributing jazz in hi-res audio formats. The two albums reviewed in this article can stand on their own artistic merits, and will be appreciated by hi-res jazz fans who want to hear first-rate musical performances in excellent recorded sound.

Harmen Fraanje Trio: First Meeting (Just Listen)

Harmen Fraanje is a pianist-composer who, in recent years, has become more widely known outside of the Netherlands through his festival appearances and recordings on the ECM label with Norwegian composer- bassist Mats Eilertsen. Fraanje’s earlier dates for Challenge Jazz, both as a leader (“Sonatala”) and sideman (Eric Vloeimans’ “Boom Petit”), set the stage for a new recording under his leadership, “First Meeting”.

Jazz musicians forge a personal style first by imitation, then by elimination. Harmen Fraanje’s style, shaped by his studies at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, reflects an interest in extending back through the traditions of jazz and classical music, and forward into new directions. In Fraanje’s compositions, jazz phrasing and rhythm are refracted through the prism of a modern melodic sensibility. Now in his early 40s, Fraanje has a sound of his own, and you won’t mistake him for his keyboard contemporaries.

One of the virtues of “First Meeting” is the careful sequencing which connects the first six tracks of the album; the effect is of a coherent musical suite. The intensity of the opening track “Several” is balanced by bassist Clemens van der Feen’s meditative piece for trio and clarinet “Bread of Life”, which flows seamlessly into Fraanje’s deceptively tranquil “Pi” for unaccompanied piano. Fraanje’s arrangement of Carla Bley’s composition, “Ida Lupino” is followed by a “Fade”, a short interlude that bridges into the pastoral “A Small Ray of Light”.

In the second half of the album, the music takes on a harder edge and a darker emotional hue. American drummer Tristan Renfrow is the featured soloist on “XYZ”, a showpiece for subtle execution of intricate polyrhythms. Saxophonist Fredrik Ljunkvist’s composition “PH” recalls the post-bop of Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. Ljunkvist takes his solo ‘out’ into multiphonics on Fraanje’s free excursion “Epi”. The final two tracks, “Safe” and “Goodbye”, as their titles suggest, return to a calm, if somber, emotional ground.

Recording engineer Jared Sacks created the balance on the spot by moving musicians closer or further from the mics… no post-production, mixing or editing is done.

Jonas Sacks

Jared Sacks, known to SACD and DSD music collectors as the chief engineer for Channel Classics, is a long-time proponent of DSD recording. Sacks recorded the Harmen Fraanje group in the legendary spacious soundstage of MCO, Hilversum. The original DSD 256 recording captures every nuance of the pianist’s touch and phrasing, the depth of the standup bass, the “air” around the drums and cymbals, and the wide spectrum of saxophone tones.

The mix indeed sounds exactly like the positions of the musicians as shown in the session photos included in the liner notes booklet. That speaks to a commitment by Jonas and Jared Sacks to represent the musical performance exactly as it occurred in the studio.

Play “First Meeting”, and you’ll find that you just listen.

Tony Overwater and Bert van den Brink: Impromptu (Sound Liaison)

“Impromptu” vividly captures the sound of an intimate venue at a very special one-time performance.

Cue the 4th track on “Impromptu” on your music server, turn up the volume, and step for a moment outside your listening room… you’ll feel as if you’re walking away from the musicians, not from your loudspeakers.

How was this illusion created? Here’s the recipe: take one adventurous audio engineer, add five strategically-placed microphones, sift it all through DSD recording technology, and stir in a large portion of musical magic.

Describing the spontaneity of live recordings, album engineer Frans de Rond writes:

“The audience becomes part of the music making and help spur the musicians on to great heights. The musicians feeling the empathy from the audience dare to take chances that one rarely hears in a studio recording.“

When bassist Tony Overwater and pianist Bert Van Den Brink were invited to perform an impromptu set of tunes on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the high-end audio shop “Rhapsody”, in Hilversum, the Netherlands, they were definitely taking chances. The two musicians had never performed together before, and there was no prior rehearsal. An enthusiastic invited audience packed Rhapsody’s listening room — one wonders how there was enough space to fit in a grand piano. The stage was set for whatever might happen.

Prior to hearing this album, I was familiar with bassist Tony Overwater through his SACD recordings “O.P.”, a tribute to the American bass player and composer Oscar Pettiford, and “Jungle Boldie”, an eclectic modern trio project with reeds player Maarten Ornstein and drummer Wim Kegel. Overwater’s ability to adapt and communicate effectively with pianist Bert van den Brink, in spite of never having performed together, is a measure of his experience and creative resources.

Half the tunes in this set are well-known standards: “If I Should Lose You”, “I Fall in Love Too Easily”, “Nardis” and “My Foolish Heart”; the latter two songs are closely associated with pianist Bill Evans. Three improvisations and Tony Overwater’s composition “De Boot” fill out the set. Van den Brink generally opens with an unaccompanied introduction, then states the melody of the song, which sets a tone for Overwater’s accompaniment. Each player solos in turn, having established the tempo and overall mood in which the piece will be presented.

Appropriately enough, considering the name of the audio shop, Bert van den Brink plays in a rhapsodic style, freely embellishing and orchestrating the songs with decorative arpeggios and dense chords. The familiarity of the standards provides a framework for reframing the melodies in fresh and unexpected turns of phrase. Overwater accompanies with restraint and good musical judgment, making for a unified sound that belies the absence of a performing history with van den Brink. It all works, which might have surprised the musicians and much as it pleased the audience.

Many of the other releases from Sound Liaisons are studio sessions recorded with a single-point stereo microphone, a rigorous and painstaking approach to production. The label has a goal of establishing a distinctive house sound while documenting new jazz music from the Netherlands. It’s an exciting venture that has earned critical praise from audio and jazz enthusiasts, and a place in this listener’s music library.

The post Two Audiophile DSD Jazz Reviews: First Meeting & Impromptu appeared first on NativeDSD Music.