Saturday 6 January 2024, 23:00 CET – The Art of the Improvisers.
This time a ‘Dutch’ program with music by Willem Breuker, the J.C. Tans Orchestra and Nedly Elstak. Elstak (1931-1989) was a trumpet player, composer, pianist, band leader, jazz club owner and also a respected music theory teacher for both professionals and beginners. His style ranges from bebop to avant-garde – his compositions from works for piano solo to works for large orchestras. In 1983 he was awarded the Boy Edgar Prize.
In December 1964, Elstak performed in the Theater Concordia in Enschede. The tenorist Dick Vennik was next to him on the stage. The quintet line-up was completed by pianist Rein de Graaff, bassist Ferdi Rikkers and drummer Leo de Ruiter. Avila and Tequila, a composition by hard bopper Hank Mobley, is a vehicle for hard swing. You can feel the temperature rising.
About 19 years later, in 1983, Elstak taps from a different barrel with Beautiful Mountain. A piece for piano solo, performed by himself. A tribute to composer Arnold Schönberg but that is not immediately obvious. The basis in E is not directly Schönbergian but some of the complex passages can possibly be associated with the Viennese Atonalist. Let’s just consider it to be 100% Elstak. The bassline is striking.
In the 1960s, Elstak collaborated with reed player and composer Theo Loevendie, for example in the Workshop Kwartet with Dick van der Capellen on bass and John Engels on drums. Elstak’s Love You So is a product of his ‘searching’ style period. Fixed tempo and free tempo alternate. Long ‘free’ solos from the wind instruments. And do we also hear a – uncredited – piano in the mix, somewhere halfway through the number, following the trumpet solo? That must be Loevendie.
The programme opens with music from Willem Breuker – another musician with whom Elstak often worked – from his album De Onderste Steen, and closes with the J.C. Tans Orchestra (Around the World).
The full playlist can be found here.
The Art of the Improvisers – Bert Broere
(photo: Pieter Boersma)
Elstak worked for several years at the Meertens Institute, a research institute for Dutch language and culture. You could call it his ‘office job’. He is also featured in the autobiographical series of novels Het Bureau (The Office), in which author J.J. Voskuil describes his working life at this institute. In five thousand pages! Voskuil calls himself Maarten Koning in the novel – and Nedly Elstak becomes Stanley Graanschuur.
A brief meeting between the two goes like this: Granary is typing song lyrics. King: “Isn’t that boring?” Granary: “No, work is never boring.” King: “You play the trumpet?” “Yes, indeed.” “Isn’t that a lot less boring?” “But you can’t play the trumpet all day. You also have to work.”
