Earshot Hosts Amsterdam at

Con Works He is rightly considered one of the Music before moving to Amsterdam in world’s leading trombonists, both for 1982. He, like Wolter Wierbos, has been Wolter Wierbos his highly advanced technical prowess awarded the prestigious Boy Edgar Prize, Kaufmann/Moore/van der and his imaginative expansion of the ex- and has made his mark with a vast array Schyff pectations of jazz and improvised music. of the leading Dutch New Jazz innova- In the U.S., he may be familiar only to tors, including the Clusone Trio, the ICP Tuesday, October 4, 8 pm devotees of the more out forms of jazz, Orchestra, and bands led by Misha Men- Consolidated Works (500 Boren St) but in Europe he is widely acclaimed, gelbert, Maarten Altena, Marilyn Crisp- Tickets $12 ($10 for members, and much celebrated. He has won such ell, Gerry Hemingway, Mark Helias, Fred seniors, students) awards as the foremost award in Dutch Hersch, Klaus Konig, Myra Melford, and jazz, the Boy Edgar Prize, as well as the many others. He, again like Wierbos, has BY PETER MONAGHAN Laren Jazzpodium and Podium Prizes for also been involved in many theater and Here’s a double bill featuring some jazz and improvised music. dance projects, and is the founder of the of the best of the Amsterdam jazz scene, He can, in fact, be heard on more Ramboy record label. for three decades a hot vent of great in- than 100 recordings, and has also been Moore’s band Available Jelly, a long- novation in the art form. Wolter Wierbos involved in many projects for fi lm, the- time project that has recorded on the is the virtuoso trombonist heard with ater—testimony to his versatility. He Ramboy label and traces its roots back to eclectic outfi ts like Misha Mengelberg’s has even been invited to play with Sonic the Great Salt Lake Mime Troupe, with ICP Orchestra, the Berlin Contemporary Youth. which Moore made his fi rst trip to Am- Jazz Orchestra (led by Alexander von Acclaim for Wierbos stems from the sterdam in the late 1970s. Th e Jelly sextet Schlippenbach), the Gerry Hemingway mastery of his playing, and its iconoclas- includes Wierbos as well as Englishman- Quintet, and the beautifully bent Bik tic style. He ranges comfortably from in-Amsterdam Tobias Delius (who will be Bent Braam. the classic trombone vocabulary to the heard here in Seattle during the Earshot most experimental, and even impishly Jazz Festival this year). irreverent, margins of the instrument’s Like Wierbos and Kaufmann, Moore possibilities. Imagine a trombone sound, possesses huge technical skill that he and he’s sure to have used it somewhere, matches with a subtlety and personal ap- and be liable to use it again. proach that has won him great popularity Wierbos appears solo on this evening’s in Seattle on his several previous visits concert, and the Kaufmann/Moore/van with the Clusone Trio and others. He der Schyff trio also performs a solo set, excels equally on clarinet, bass clarinet, but expect, too, some wild-and-woolly and alto saxophone. combinations of all the players. Dylan van der Schyff is virtually the Two key fi gures on the Amsterdam house drummer of the extraordinary Van- scene, Achim Kaufmann, the German pi- couver International Jazz Festival, and of anist, and Michael Moore, the American the many other concerts of European and clarinetist and saxophonist, join forces in North American free improv and out jazz a fascinating, bassless trio with the Van- that the city’s Coastal Jazz and Blues soci- couver BC out-drum stalwart, Dylan van ety stages during each year. So welcome der Schyff , in the trio KaMoSc. have his contributions been to shows by Kaufmann is a richly nuanced pianist the likes of George Lewis, Louis Sclavis, in the post-Paul Bley tradition who writes Eyvind Kang, Georg Gr?, John Butcher, exquisite tunes—”not gratuitously com- Evan Parker, and many others that he has plicated though often dodecaphonic,” become a wide-world-traveling player, as Michael Moore puts it. With all that, called on by a vast array of the greatest he is a subtle, layered, elusive musician improvisers of the day. whose relative obscurity to American Here’s a show not to miss—the perfect audiences bears no relation at all to the curtain raiser for the Earshot festival that scope of his talent. begins mid-October, and a wide window Originally from Eureka, California, into the wonders of the current Amster- Michael Moore studied with Jaki Byard dam scene. at the New England Conservatory of

14 • Earshot Jazz • September 2005