© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
There’s nothing
more exciting than a big band playing The Blues, especially one on which they
can stretch out on at the beginning of a concert.
To hear “what I’m
talkin’ ‘bout,” checkout the following 10:31 minute audio-only track that
features Holland’s Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw playing director Henk
Meutgeert’s The Blues.
Henk’s arrangement
has got it all: a driving opening chorus which gives way to solos by pianist
Peter Betts and a tenor battle by Simon Rigter and Sjoerd Dijkhuizen; an alto sax solo by Marco Kegel; an
interlude between solos formed by a unison trumpet chorus; a Jesse van Ruller guitar solo; a Ruud Bruels trumpet solo; Ilja Reijngoud soloing on trombone
followed by Jan van Duikeren on trumpet; a “shout-me-out chorus” that begins at
9:25 minutes and a thrilling ending with drums breaks by Martijn Vink and trumpets screaming in
the higher register.
And this is just
the beginning of a 2 hour concert that took place at The Bimhuis in Amsterdam November
14, 2007 !
The beer
commercial guys were right: “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
