Bill Holman and The Netherlands Metropole Orchestra

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

For many years, large orchestras performing Jazz were part of the cultural scene in European countries like the Netherlands and Germany as revenues collected from various commodities and income tax were used to subsidize such organizations.

Sadly, even before the Covid pandemic, performances by these organizations were being scaled back due to budgetary consideration and changes in popular music tastes.

Still it was fun while it lasted as is recounted in the following remembrances from his time with The Netherlands Metropole Orchestra from circa 1996 - 2002 that composer-arranger Bill Holman shared with Bill Dobbins in Conversations with Bill Holman: Thoughts and Recollections of a Jazz Master.

Bill Holman: Yeah. When I first started going over there, the Metropole Orchestra had a TV show every Saturday night.

Bill Dobbins: Yeah. I thought that one of the interesting things about the concert schedule of the Metropole Orchestra is that they have their concerts on Sunday afternoon at 2 PM, so that all the musicians in town can come to the concerts if they want to. They're usually not working on Sunday afternoon.

The Netherlands Metropole Orchestra

B. D. Another important haven of opportunity for jazz writers over the last thirty years or so has been the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra, based in Hilversum. [ This unique orchestra has an instrumentation of 2 flutes, 1 oboe/English horn, 1 French horn, 5 saxes, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass trombone, guitar, piano, bass, drums, 2 percussion, harp and a string section of twenty-two players.]

Could you talk about the circumstances that led to your first opportunity to write for them? 

B. H. Well, I had been hearing the group for years, when they were primarily backing up soloists. I heard a lot of good things about them from Zoot Sims, Phil Woods, and a lot of other people. Rob Pronk did many of the arrangements, and he really had the orchestra down in terms of writing for that instrumentation. 

And then, Frits Bayens [producer/manager for the orchestra] showed up out here one day, called, and said, "Come on over and do something with us." He was talking about my writing for them, and I had always avoided it because they paid so little for music. But he said, "Well, things are changing. You should give it a try." So I asked him what I could expect as a fee. He made me an offer and I said, "Well, I think I could accept that."

So he went back to Europe and then called a while later, saying that he wanted me to write a long piece. So I thought, "Well, that sounds great, to write a long original piece and get paid well for it." So I did it. I was a little apprehensive about conducting. But I'd been apprehensive about that before, so I didn't let it stop me. So I went over and met everybody. The social atmosphere is great. Everyone was very helpful, including the string players, which was very rare. Both (Laugh.)

B. H. And that's especially the case when you're asking them to play things that might not be normal for them.

B. D. Sure. What was that first piece? 

B. H. Beats me. Both (Laugh.)

B. D. Do you remember what year it was?

B. H. I can't remember. The thing I did with Lee [Konitz] was around '97, so it must have been early or mid-'90s.

B. D. Well I think Issues and Answers was recorded in '91. [Actually, 1996]

B. H. That piece may have been earlier because, several years before all this, a couple of guys from the Metropole Orchestra had come over. They were looking for new writers to do things, and they are the ones who had me do Issues and Answers. This was some time before my contact with Frits. [Issues and Answers was also the name of a popular political talk show on U.S. national TV at the time the piece was written. The longer Holman piece in question was a four-movement work entitled Further Adventures, which was also the title of a Bill Holman CD with the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra, released in 1997].

B. D. So the piece Frits commissioned you to do was a longer piece, maybe twenty-five to thirty minutes?

B. H. Yeah, it was over thirty minutes. I can remember the second piece. They had me back the next year to do a similar thing, and I wrote a long piece called Pomona. 

B. D. Oh, Yeah. You sent me a CD of that, and I enjoyed it immensely. 

B. H. They didn't know that it was the name of a town, so I could get away with it over there.

Both (Laugh.)

B. H. It just sounds like a nice word. 

B.D. Exactly.

B. H. I hear those things back now, and I can see a lot of bad things that I didn't see then, but I was glad to have a chance to do them. I didn't have enough writing techniques to do different things for a piece of that length. The thing with Lee came off better, because a lot of the load was on him. It's like writing for a singer. It takes some of the heat off of you. But these other pieces were strictly for the orchestra and the soloists of the orchestra, and they came off OK. The band seemed to like them. I was a lousy conductor. I'm really happy that they had that good attitude, so they could make up for my conducting deficiencies. So we managed to get through everything without any trouble. They had a drummer, Cees Kronenberg, who was great for the tempo changes and things like that. I did another project with Bob Malach, and that came off well. The one with Lee was after that, and then there was one with Pete Christlieb. I think that was it.

Then somebody realized that they couldn't afford to go on like this, and that they had to go back to doing some stuff with some mass appeal. So I never went back. (Laughs.) 

B. D. From what I understand, they're doing more and more pop-oriented projects and less and less jazz things. The programs usually feature vocalists, and have themes centered around popular films or other hooks that offer more popular appeal. And they've had two rhythm sections for quite a few years, one with jazz players and one with players who use electric instruments and are more oriented toward popular idioms. It's unfortunate, but everything seems to be going more and more wherever the big money leads.

B. H. Yeah. There have been several attempts already to cut down the size or do away with the orchestra, but they've managed to keep it going so far. But even when I was going over, and they had a more daring approach, they were getting yelled at by the budget people.

When I first went over there I worked with The Skymasters [Dutch Big Band in existence from 1946-1997.]. Have you ever heard about them?

B. D. I heard about them after being in Cologne for a while, but that group was no longer working then. They had quite a reputation. I should have tracked down some recordings, but I never got around to it.

B. H. Yeah, they finally folded up. But it was really a nice band. They had some great players, Ferdinand Povel, Ack van Rooyen, and some others.