After a lockdown last autumn thwarted the biennial Willem Breuker Prize, only two will be awarded on Friday in the Bimhuis in Amsterdam. The jury chose violinist Diamanda La Berge Dramm and the duo of lutenist Mike Fentross and bass clarinetist Maarten Ornstein for “their contribution to a new musical landscape”, an aspiration that embodies the name of the prize, saxophonist and composer Willem Breuker (1944-2010). .
Ornstein grew up in jazz and improvised music, Breuker’s field of activity, which he – as the only one of the three prize winners – encountered with some regularity. “I admired the unbridledness in him. He was a musical volcano. When he played with his collective, a cannon went off. Breuker was boundless.” The latter also applies to the duo that Ornstein has been forming for about eight years with Mike Fentross, the lutenist who mainly focuses on recreating pieces from the Renaissance and Baroque. They mix music from many centuries and cultures into a new sound image.
You can chat here at the bar with another musician, come up with something and quickly put the word into action
La Berge Dramm grew up in a musical family – father a composer, mother a flutist – in which a visit to a jazz performance at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam was just as common as going to a classical orchestra in the Concertgebouw. She started her search for her own identity at a young age, in the midst of all those influences. She is still discovering new voices in her violin.
“I actually did everything, but tried to focus more on one genre in certain periods. That didn’t make me happy. I think it’s important to listen to my instrument from different points of view, as if you were opening a window, letting fresh air in and sticking your head out to see, smell and hear new things.”
‘Full couch’
A few weeks before the award ceremony, the three musicians are in the attic of Splendor, an old Amsterdam bathhouse that was transformed into a creative sanctuary some ten years ago by fifty musicians and their audience. Without this building, the Ornstein-Fentross duo would not have existed. “We first met in Paradiso at a concert conceived by double bassist Wilmar de Visser, also the driving force behind Splendor,” says Fentross.
Ornstein: „A year after Paradiso we met again, this time at Splendor. In this building the atmosphere reigns: let’s do something together. Here you can chat with another musician at the bar, come up with something, draw up agendas, see that there is a room available the next day and put your money where your mouth is. In that sense, having a home like this is invaluable.”
La Berge Dramm: “And you don’t need anything. In regular halls you often come up with many new ideas in a classic corset. It then becomes more difficult to find spontaneity. Here we learned that we can take that freedom.”
Ornstein: “Have to take.”
Fentross: “You can just go nuts here.”
Ornstein: “It’s important to try ideas that make you think, ‘Whew, this wasn’t okay.’ At least then you know that too.”
Fentross: „I remember our first concert here. We had optimistically booked the main hall, but less than ten people showed up. Then we went to the attic.” He points behind him. “And we had a full bank. haha.”
noise band
During her studies in the United States, La Berge Dramm already experimented with other types of performances. “In Boston, I had a concert series at my home and at an art gallery with friends. Because what we do is about each other and about people. How does it click musically? Everything happened in those places: from a noise band to a violinist playing Paganini’s Caprices performed.”
Fentross: “What is a noise band?”
La Berge Dramm: „A band that only noise makes. A friend was in one such group wearing gorilla masks. One day they played alone: bambam, bambambambam…. They had memorized how many times. That went on for ten minutes. Visitors loved it. That is why I like to lump influences together: interaction between musicians remains fascinating.”
Ornstein: “That is also the case here. As a jazz musician I saw how others handled their instrument. In the beginning I was still at the bar one evening at twelve o’clock. Jörgen van Rijen, trombonist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, enters there: ‘I’m going to practice in the main hall for two more hours,’ he said. And I thought: Jesusmina, would they all be like that? But I was also intrigued by it.”
La Berge Dramm: “Splendor reminds me of college days, when you get the chance to flourish in freedom. Then everything crystallizes.”
Fentross: “And that must be it.”
La Berge Dramm: “In this building I immediately got the feeling: I can discover myself here.”