Huub

Originally released on A Day at the Office (2016)

Huub is Huub van Riel, the BIMhuis’s first manager, for many years the person running the place. A nice guy, still is, though he could be remarkably vague when it suited him. I sat on the board of SJIN, the Foundation for Jazz and Improvised Music in the Netherlands, for a while, and there were some genuinely difficult stretches with Huub during that time, late to everything, rarely a straight answer, behaving as though it was simply a matter of time until the next set of board members arrived to take over from us. On the other hand, in the early days of the BIMhuis, someone like Huub had an excellent nose for who was worth booking, and a good deal of the reputation the venue carries today can be credited to exactly that instinct. As with most people in that kind of position, he stayed too long, past the point where staying does more damage to a reputation than leaving in time would have. Knowing when to leave is, of course, always the harder part.

When Kevin Whitehead was writing the liner notes and saw the title, he asked whether this was really the Huub he thought it might be. It is. So here’s why.

The piece opens with a trombone line, mine, and gradually the other three horns join in, the same trick as At Home, playing my line back at double tempo or faster, building up toward a long high C. Then Tini Thomsen takes over on bass clarinet. I’d heard her play in Rotterdam and noticed something beyond just how musical she was, she also made real use of the lower registers, both on bass clarinet and baritone sax. Most colleagues end up somewhere in the stratosphere by the time a solo finishes. She didn’t, big, fat, low notes instead. Which makes sense the more you think about it, why would you pick up an instrument that size just to chase the sound of a soprano sax or an E flat clarinet? Bring the small ones next time if that’s what you’re after, problem solved.

After her solo I come back in with the same melody, this time with even faster lines running underneath from the other horns. And that’s where Huub comes in properly. The trombone line is him, undisturbed, holding steady no matter how busy or chaotic everything else gets around him. Huub stayed on track, and that steadiness was a real part of what kept the BIMhuis where it is, through all of it, forty years now, give or take.