Route 1
Rode Route

This is truly beautiful music in the odd combination of trumpet and harp. The opening concert at the Aduard monastery church will put your body and mind into a meditative cycling tour mode. Giovanna Pessi and Tom Arthurs met in the circle of the ECM label. They have been operating their trumpet/harp duo for three years now. The repertoire hearkens back to both western classical and oriental music. Musical treasures from India, Chile and Uganda are incorporated into their music. Brit Tom Arthurs was one of the stars of the Miles Perkin Quartet at Niehove, last year. Swiss harpist Giovanna Pessi is both active in classical music and in the Norwegian Christian Wallumrød Ensemble.

Singer Una Bergin (saxophonist/bandleader Sean Bergin’s daughter) has assembled a special edition of her band Snowapple for the ZJFT. Nearly all these musicians were members of Sean Bergin’s MOB (My Own Band), which often caused musical havoc at the ZJFT with its catchy South African tunes. Snowapple takes you along into a playful, sometimes absurd world, where humour is always nearby. The outfit, with three vocalists, will present its new album, Wrong Feet, at the Amsterdam Bimhuis in late September. The Huizinga barn will provide a sneak preview.

Reedist Steven Kamperman had a residence at the Paris Theo van Doesburghuis for a number of months in this past winter. The Utrecht musician took inspiration from the exceptional architecture, geometrical forms and primary colours, to write the suite Maison Moderne. Clarinettist Kamperman has been a ZJFT regular over the years. He performed in a trio with violist Oene van Geel and the French tuba player Michel Godard. And with singer Sanem Kalfa and violist/guitarist George Dimitriu in the Horizon Trio. During this edition, new work in special arrangements by Kamperman and Van Geel will also be performed by the large Zummerbühne orchestra in Maarhuizen.

For jazz cyclists with a good memory, tenor saxophonist Thomas Borgmann should be a familiar name. He played a duo concert with the New York avant-garde pianist Borah Bergman in 1999, and in 2011 his Berlin power trio Boombox was a guest in Oostum (where they arrived too late, while the church had already filled up; see photo). In Ruf der Heimat, Borgmann is still firmly at the helm. In the past he had the late whirlwind Peter Brötzmann at his side, but nowadays the nimble trombonist Christof Thewes takes up this position. For the past three decades this fiery quartet has shied away from nothing.

Up in Groningen we first got acquainted with trumpeter Dave Douglas in an overwhelming set by John Zorn’s Masada at the 1996 Jazzmarathon. Dave Douglas was 33 at the time. By now he has recorded some sixty albums as a leader. An outstanding one among them, is Mountain Passages from 2005, which he released on his own Greenleaf label (in Europe on the Koch label). The main ingredients for this music are influences from jazz, classical music and Eastern European folk music. The American trumpeter reassembled the ideal band from back then. A well-known figure in the stellar line-up is clarinettist Michael Moore from Amsterdam. The Canadian drummer Dylan van der Schyff, incidentally, was featured at the ZJFT before. The live recording with saxophonist Tobias Delius and pianist Cor Fuhler from 2001 is available as a Hi-Res download.

Garnwerd will once again feature a ZJFT tent as a central meeting point, with scrumptious food stalls. The tent also functions as a music stage during the daytime and for the final party in the evening. This year, it features Naked Ears, the jazz funk band of bassist Jasper de Beer, best known for his work with the Amsterdam Klezmer band. Co-led by guitarist/producer Gil Lopez, this eight piece outfit presents an exciting mix of funk grooves, P-funk, ska and Afro beat. The American singer/trombonist Joseph Bowie (Defunkt) will be featured as a special guest.

And extra: DJ Swoolish in the tent.