Plint

Live recording, originally for VPRO radio (1994)

Plint is a tribute to Sonny Rollins and it was written with St. Thomas in mind, not the notes themselves, but the idea behind it, a calypso, that particular lightness Rollins made sound so effortless. My own version runs eleven bars, unusual by any normal measure, something like a blues with the fourth bar quietly removed. My quartet at the time managed to play it so naturally that nobody in the room seemed to notice anything was missing.

The best solo on it, and I’d say the best solo on anything I’ve ever recorded, belongs to my dear friend Tobias Delius. It was recorded live for VPRO, the Dutch broadcaster, at O42 in Nijmegen, a legendary jazz venue back then.

This is also the only recording by this particular quartet, and the lineup has its own small history. After I left the Willem Breuker Kollektief, I started a quintet: Martin van Duynhoven on drums, Wilbert de Joode on double bass, Jan Kuiper on electric guitar, and Bo van de Graaf on soprano and alto saxophone. Tobias Delius returned from a long trip around then, and I asked him to join too, already, in my entirely biased opinion, the best tenor saxophonist on the Amsterdam scene. We played Willem Breuker’s yearly festival, Klap op de Vuurpijl, that particular year at Hotel Krasnapolski on the Dam.

After a few concerts I wasn’t satisfied with what Bo and Jan were bringing to it, and decided to move on as a quartet instead. Around the same time I was trying to get a slot on VPRO radio, and once Pierre Courbois, drummer and programmer both, gave the go-ahead, a quartet was all I had to offer, so a quartet it was.

After that recording I decided the band needed an extra player again, and called Corrie van Binsbergen, an upcoming guitarist at the time, who joined happily. Before we recorded my first album, Dance of the Penguins, for BVHAAST, I also swapped Martin for Charles Huffstadt, a drummer from the Groningen area who’d played extensively with Greetje Bijma. With that lineup I recorded three albums, one of them with Ab Baars on clarinet and the Zapp! string quartet joining in.