“Rob was also a teacher of mathematics and maybe that had also something to do with the fact that he became a wizard in harmony. He was a very straight ahead and honest person and he only wanted to play the music he liked. That was one of the reasons he gave up his job as a professional musician and became a teacher in mathematics. That way he had a steady income in order to give his family financial support and he could still play the music he loved on a very high level. Later on he got an offer for a teaching position at the conservatory in Amsterdam, which he accepted and he became a great inspiration for young upcoming pianists.’ - Eric Ineke, drummer, bandleader and educator
Photo: www.jazzmasters.nl
Thanks to the efforts Jazz buddies and Jazz musicians based in The Netherlands, I’ve have been able to piece together a modicum of awareness of the Dutch Jazz scene.
Each in their own way has been a regular source of information, education and awareness about “Jazz Behind the Dikes.” [the phrase comes from the title of one of the earliest compilations of the music of Dutch Jazz groups which was released on Philips Records in 1955.]
For a country with a population of 16.8 million people - about the same number of people are in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties; four of the five counties that make up the greater part of southern California - the Dutch have produced quite a respectable number of distinguished Jazz musicians, many of whom have been previously featured on these pages.
Because of my “inside connections,” I have been made especially privy to knowledge about many of the talented composer-arrangers who write charts for big bands, but who don’t lead their own orchestras.
Occasionally, individual or retrospectives performances of the work of these less well-known big band arrangers is the focus of concerts by publicly and/or privately supported resident Dutch orchestras such at The Metropole Orchestra [which includes a string section], The Metropole Big Band [sans strings], the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, the Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra, and the Dutch Jazz Orchestra.
The Metropole, although based in Hilversum about 35 kilometers SE of Amsterdam frequently gives concerts at the Bimhuis, the musicians union concert hall based in Amsterdam, the country’s capital city. The Concertgebouw’s Jazz Orchestra is resident in that great concert hall which is located in Den Hague while the Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra is resident in the North Sea port city that bears its name. Rotterdam also hosts the annual North Sea Jazz Festival at which the Dutch jazz Orchestra has made frequent appearance.
One of these appearance by the DJO at the NSJF has particular meaning for me because it was at that festival in 2008 that the big band paid tribute to the music of Rob Madna who was the DJO’s musical director for a short time when it was first organized in 1983.
The title of this piece derives from the fact that Rob was a very analytical individual who solved problems of technique and perception in a very deliberate manner. He taught himself to play piano, how to arrange music for a big band and established himself as both a professor of music at a conservatory level and as a university professor in mathematics. “Wizard,” perhaps is an understatement. Mathematics has been described as “the bridge to infinity” and is no doubt a suitable training ground for the infinite variation that is Jazz improvisation. It was Rob’s genius to be able to function and create in both universes, thus bridging the worlds of Mathematics with the world of Jazz.
I first became familiar with Rob when I heard him as a pianist in a trio with Dick Bezemer on bass and Wessel Ilcken on drums. Later in his career, Rob could often be heard in the company of Marius Beets on bass and Eric Ineke on drums as a trio or as a rhythm section for Ferdinand Povel, an excellent tenor saxophonist.
read more: http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com.br/2015/11/rob-madna-wizard-of-dutch-jazz.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+JazzProfiles+(Jazz+Profiles)
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