The Dutch jazz prompt Ian Cleaver went to New York: ‘Here you get deeper to the core of Jazz’

As a young Dutch jazz promise living in New York, making meters at the jazz stages, in the footsteps of the big ones. That is Living the Dreamright? Jazz trumpet player Ian Cleaver (28) from Amsterdam – clear, eager tone and a nostalgic desire for jazz from the fifties and sixties – is certainly not the first Dutch jazz musician trying for a while.

There were those during their jazz study, petering in a basement room without windows, alive of 15 dollars a day, quickly longed back to home. But there are also plenty who, despite the fact that New York is a large, individualistic city, found musical inspiration for years, such as the saxophonists Ben van Gelder and Tineke Postma and also Bassist Joris Teepe – has been active in New for more than thirty years York.

The need to play at the sharpest on cut is high, Ian Cleaver also notes. It is morning in New York and he is in his bedroom. With Gedempte Voice: “I don’t want to disturb my roommates, they are still sleeping.” It turns the laptop camera around. From his window he has a beautiful view of Broadway, the long diagonal that manhattan cleaves through his Harlem district towards The Bronx. Behind him his gallery of honor is for inspiration: jazz photos of musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.

The reason for this conversation is that Ian Cleaver has made a record on which tradition and renewal merge seamlessly. More about that later. First he tells how he always dreamed of living and working in New York as a teenager. “I have always been so fascinated and obsessed with Jazz that I always want to learn more from it.” In New York he has the idea of ​​getting to the core of Jazz deeper. “What the music is about and how it came about.” In addition, he says, there are still plenty of living legends to play with or get lessons at home, “like saxophonist George Coleman or jazz drummer Al Foster.”

What attracts him special is how great the role of music is in New York life. That, for example, with his trumpet case on his back, he is approached on the street – “Oh man, you play the trumpet. I’ve Seen Miles Davis Play Back In The 80’s And It Changed My Life. And where do you play? ”

“You feel genuine interest. Music is more part of daily life here, I have the idea. Is a concert a special occasion in the Netherlands, here in New York there are many per evening, in one go. ” He also experiences “a kind of deeper understanding of music, people know the music history.” “As a result, musicians also become a deeper layer.”

Jazz juniors

His British father still had a trumpet from his school days. Trumpet lessons received the young Ian, who grew up in Amsterdam, from Aunt Greet, from the age of fifth at Fanfarevereniging Onze Genoegen in the Jordaan. Around the age of ten he jozz Juniors, the youth orchestra of Peter Guidi – the renowned super jazz teacher who trained many young jazz musician in his big bands.

His Bachelor achieved Cleaver at the Amsterdam Conservatory. New York, since he was nineteen, was going to go there for the first time as the winner of the Princess Christina Competition. “I come back here, I knew that.”

Cleavers best friend, saxophonist Gideon Tazelaar, whom he got to know in Guidi’s jazz orchestra and with whom he flattened the jam sessions of saxophonist Benjamin Herman, it moved first. Cleaver followed. But his first exchange as a jazz student stranded through the first lockdowns of the pandemie. He flew back to Amsterdam. In 2021 it really happened: a two -year master ‘JazzPerformance’ at the Manhattan School of Music.

Rake in

At that time, Cleaver knew: the jazz training courses are for rake in jazz skills. The artistic search is outside. The proof was released this week in New York recorded album Yarn! . It is his first album as a band leader with mainly his own compositions, two standards and an original by Joe Henderson. Included in the renowned Rudy van Gelder Studio. If there is one place the holy grail of jazz, where a lot of legendary jazz albums come from, then this is it.

The album is the outcome of how good he feels in the young lively jazz community that he now calls his home. Where excel is in the basic package – “everyone plays at a high level.” He all knows the musicians in his international quintet from the scene.

His jazz is clear and playful and is without fuss. Just like on the well -received plate Volume 1 Which he released in 2021 with buddy Tazelaar – a classic alliance of trumpet and saxophone in the front line. The desire for the jazz from, from the fifties and sixties is not to be missed. “From Bebop to Hardbop, which is Jazz lying very complex, intuitive and strong with folk music. It appeals to me that so much could happen in the moment. ”

Melancholy

At the same time, Cleaver is striking his music to stories and influences from today. It is not for nothing that his plate is called Yarn!a ‘woven narrative’ from his New York jazz adventure. With the exception of the melancholy Swing-Ute (‘Marijn’) to his deceased mother.

And is everything fun then? No. A song such as ‘Gloria’ expresses the doubts that sometimes exist. What am I doing here? What am I doing so far from home? “Certainly if I hardly have any performances for a few weeks, I think so.” But it always attracts, he knows.

Support from the Van den Ende Foundation came for his two -year course. Since then it has been a matter of acting as much as possible. Play, play, spélen – from wine bar to wedding. “You have to. You tackle everything, everyone does that. Yes also the big ones. ” A regular gig as a musician at the Off-Broadway Daily Theater Show Sleep No More offered security to recently. “I played about ten times a month, that was nice. It was an Immersive Macbeth production: actors, musicians and the audience walked around in a sort of Roaring Twenties film set with a jazz bar. ”

In the meantime, Cleaver has an artist visa – a sample of bureaucratic through many hoops where you have to demonstrate with many recommendations that you are ‘addition to the art world’. “Just in Time“He chuckles. “Just before Trump restricts everything.” He is in the right place until the end of 2027. “By that time I see if I will stay here or not.”

The album Yarn! Can be listened to all streaming services.

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