Friday 7 July The halls in Ahoy may have gotten larger, the crowds have increased more than proportionally. North Sea Jazz is as popular as ever and that means you have to think even more carefully about who you would like to see and hear in order not to end up in front of closed […]
John Coltrane
Brad Mehldau: Portrait of the genius musician as a young man
Brad Mehldau has never been keen on giving interviews. From his low piano stool, deeply bent over the keys, he seems to shield himself from the outside world. After the publication of the first volume of Mehldau’s memoirs, his media shyness becomes more understandable. Instead of sprinkling crumbs of information, the pianist chooses to describe […]
Visionary virtuoso John Coltrane (1927-1967)
“John Coltrane played in tongues”, said one of his fellow musicians about the saxophonist who died in 1967. Are Coltrane’s initials the reason why his admirers (like Johan Cruijff’s fans did) attribute superhuman abilities to him? The reference to ‘higher things’ did not come out of the blue in Coltrane’s case: after years of struggling […]