Playing!

I've been busy playing for two weeks, something that does not happen that often, despite the fact that I have to make a living playing, hmmm. Anyway, I had a nice little tour with Lochs/Balthaus/Herskedal. We played in Orgelpark, Amsterdam, which is a brilliant spot. 4 majestic church organs to choose from, a heavenly sound (if you play without a drummer, haha) and some great music to play. Daniel wrote some new music especially for the occasion and Dirk practiced on all the organs so as to get the best sounds possible. It was a great concert and we made a very nice recording and even a little movie.
After that we went to Haarlem to play in a woodshed, which was totally crowded with an enthousiastic audience. We played very well there and we had a nice meal and a couple of fruitful conversations.
Then we went to Belgium to play in the Hopper, a well-known place, in the beautiful city of Antwerp. We had a very nice meal there, a very tiny siteseeing walk, and a good concert.


After a few days off, we went to Oberhausen for a gig in our favorite hangout: Polish cafe Gdanska. Actually a very nice theatre cafe, nice audience, grand piano, good music. The organizer, Kuro, always makes a very nice drawing of the band whenever we play there. I want to post one of these, but I am not sure if that is going to work.

The best concert was yet to come on sunday in Mülheim, Jazz in den Häusern. In Art Gallery Ricarda Fox we did a great concert, great audience, great food afterward, simply brilliant! I think that was the concert where everything came together. We were in the zone, so to speak, everything just went exactly the way we wanted. Daniel even made a lady cry with his tuba solo, which almost makes me cry everytime I hear it, to be honest.

Wow, that was a great little tour with a great little band. (Photo's by Naual Abu el Hayy)


Right after that I fell into a new project we recorded last year, but that we never played with before. A quintet with Florian Zenker on guitar, Pieter Bast on drums, Jeroen van Vliet on piano and Rhodes and the boss: Jasper Somsen on bass. Music of Enrico Pieranunzi. Really lyrical music, very hard to play right, but ever so beautiful and well written. After a good rehearsal we did a first concert in hotel De Wereld (were peace was agreed upon in 1945). In a really packed hall, we played two sets. Mostly Pieranunzi's music, but some new songs by Jasper as well. Super!
As a little intermezzo, I recorded some film tunes for Florian, who stayed at my place, and is busy writing a lot of music for a film project. Saturday we did a live show on Radio 6, Shouting Bootz, and we played as a trio (actually my Trio Bert Lochs, which is part of the Jasper Somsen Group), music of Pieranunzi and some of my own songs. After that we went straight to Utrecht to play the CD release concert in Muziekhuis XXI. A good concert in a nice hall with virtual acoustics. A bit strange to my ears, but we got used to it, and I think we did a good job, soem of the material was really hot, and some of it decent enough, but we have to really do a couple of concerts to get this difficult music to flow and groove.

Well, I guess that is enough for two weeks. Very fruitful, and also on a personal level I was very satisfied. I play lovely music with lovely people, what more can I wish for?