Jazz singer and vocalist Fleurine (Verloop) wishes the legendary BIM a vibrant future. BIM stands for Professional Association of Improvising Musicians, founded half a century ago. Not to be confused with home base the Bimhuis, which is shorter.
Fleurine presented the anniversary evening with verve, which spans five decades of contemporary jazz. As she fondly says, ‘the BIM’ once started with a close-knit young men’s club, including Willem Breuker, Pierre Courbois, Theo Loevendie and other Dutch jazz greats. This male homogeneity has been broken: she herself chairs a board that half consists of women. Still, she admits she has the greatest effort to make female jazz musicians BIM members.
No fewer than five bands, each consisting of five members, play five new compositions. This makes the number five magical. The composers were selected by open registration. In addition, the members within each of the bands may not have been born in the same decade. The underlying idea is brilliant: you always listen to jazz musicians who vary considerably in age from 1942 (drummer Han Bennink) to 1996 (the youngest, trumpeter Ian Cleaver). That makes the concert a time travel.
Quiet moments
There are names from the past, including Bennink, Arjen Gorter (double bass) and Michael Moore (saxophone). Music from the younger generation, such as double bassist and bandleader Joris Teepes ‘Tension & Release’is deeply rooted in American jazz with swinging saxophones, guitar, haunting percussion and even violin. Trumpet player Ian Cleavers Moneytree Unti-Puki adds abrasive, biting and Latin rhythms. Vocalist and composer Thomas Johannsen (1974) plays in his ‘Hidden Songs’ together with two great singers from world music.
What is conspicuously omitted is the extremely avant-garde “beep and grunt” music, as Fleurine calls it, “a pet name”. Sensational and exciting is immediately ‘Across’ by composer Miguel Ángel Santaella which combines impassioned Caribbean sounds with the unfathomable depth of bass clarinet and baritone saxophone. Or tenor saxophonist Spaargaren who adds recorders and violin to his composition ‘Rise & Fall’which at times suddenly sounds baroque while we listen to jazz.
Another thing that stands out: the many quiet moments, so subdued that the door to the bar had to close. That would be unthinkable in the early days of the BIM, when it performed in an old, former furniture store on the Oude Schans. And really unbridled jamming, going crazy, anarchistically improvising until the stars burst from the sky – none of that happened either. BIM50 is a truly dedicated listening concert.