If you organize a neighborhood party it is fun when a few neighbors play in a band. Of course you can also find that your neighbor or neighbor is a musical genius. Or that even dozens of neighbors turn out to be top musicians. That is what happens at the best moments of the new festival South East Jazz this weekend in Amsterdam: music of the highest level with the Houtje-Spouwtje logistics of a neighborhood party.
On a strip from the Johan Cruijff Arena to the Bijlmer Parktheater there are five stages on which the diversity and quality of jazz-loving Amsterdam Southeast is celebrated. Organizer and musician Orville Breeveld has found enough sponsors to keep this new festival – against the trend – for free. That makes it accessible, while the music itself sometimes requires a lot of attention, such as with the Sun-Mi Hong Quintet. The audience, in the middle of the Bijlmerplein shopping intersection, seem to want to miss no note this Saturday of her delicate jazz with free improvisations. The celebrated South Korean drummer tells how she lives a ten-minute walk and often comes here to make talks, relax.
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Also read: This interview with Sun-Mi Hong
From the Bimhuis podium for the train station, drummer Eddy Veldman first greeted his friends before playing compositions from neighbors from Paramaribo and Amsterdam. You would almost forget how unique this music is. On the rolling rhythms of the Paramaribop, partly derived from Kaseko, Veldman also plays strings, a combination that works wonderfully well.
Loss
The neighborhood feeling does not come across everywhere, partly due to problems and choices that may belong to a first edition. In a bar of the Arena, where the Grachtenfestival stage is, the atmosphere is similar to that of a soulless company drink on the Zuidas. Singer Amartey can also do little about that with his sweet Afropop. Opposite the stadium, a large field should be the heart of the festival, but there the electricity dropped. When music starts after a long delay, there is hardly any audience for the students of the Amsterdam and Surinamese conservatory. The local entrepreneurs are making a bad turnover with their food stalls this day.
Such problems are solved more charming in the Bijlmer Park Theater. If flautist Ronald Snijders plays, the foyer is full of people who no longer fit in the room. The theater doors open so that there is still a glimpse of the concert. “Because” full is full “we don’t like that,” said one of the employees. Friends crawl together on their lap, strangers dance together in the doorway. In the cheerful chaos, Snijders plays his composition ‘Bijlmer Jazz’, a swinging ode to the neighborhood.
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Also read: This piece in which Ronald Snijders tells about his flute
Trumpet player Maite Hontelé and pianist Ramón Valle are taking care of the highlight for the station. They are musical neighbors. Valle is Cuban, Hontelé played salsa at the highest level in Colombia for years. A few years ago she stopped acutely as a musician, she was spit her trumpet. “And then this man came,” she says. Valle brought her the fun of playing, by simply playing what feels good.
The Latin Jazz is as surprising and versatile as that sounds like that. At South East Jazz they play work on their album for the first time Havana. You can hear and see everything they have found each other. They improvise, point to new ways, do not know where they end. They don’t play what should or what is expected, but what they feel like. As if two friends, coincidentally top musicians, meet each other at a neighborhood party.
South East Jazz lasts until Sunday 31 August.