The corona time with lockdowns, face masks and one and a half meters away is behind us, but the Stageband Jazz Orchestra lets visitors relive this period with their new jazz suite: the Pandemic. Marco Kerver from Hoogeveen wrote the lyrics and music when the virus outbreak in March 2020 stopped the world for a while.
Tonight is the first performance in Drenthe. The 26-member company, with big band, vocalists and string quartet, will be in theater De Hofpoort in Coevorden.
“A difficult province,” says Kerver when asked about the popularity of jazz in Drenthe. “We have with the Pandemic already performed twice in Groningen. That was in Veendam and Winschoten. Then you get very positive reactions, but it is a pity that more people do not come. We are a professional jazz band, with nine nationalities and great talents. Many other big bands do not always play well and cleanly, but we do,” he explains in the Radio Drenthe program cassata.
Back to the theme with which 56-year-old Kerver and his colleagues are on stage: the corona pandemic. This eighty-minute jazz suite records how musicians in this music genre experienced this uncertain period. Their emotions are captured in both music and lyrics.
“It was not well organized for many young people”, the composer knows of fellow musicians. “Young people in our band, just professional musicians, have also stopped. It was of course an economically complicated time for them, because they are self-employed. And music lessons, whatever they normally gave, could not continue. income gone. And some older musicians, like me, had a hard time dealing with the free time they suddenly had.”
Watch the conversation with Marco Kerver here: