Intro

New double CD!

Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher Quartet
Featuring:
Paul Dunmall (bagpipes, soprano sax), Mats Gustafsson (baritone sax), Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, 'trumpbone'), François Houle (clarinet), Michael Moore (clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax), Peter van Bergen (tenor, soprano sax)
All tracks recorded live in concert.

For their 20th anniversary program in 2010 Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher invited different guest musicians for their concerts, thus forming a Quartet (or Quintet, as in Vancouver).
The compositions as written by Michiel Braam are collected in the 'Q-book'. They are in no way fixed in form or mood but serve merely as starting points for improvisations. Guests were invited to pick a few pieces, rehearse for a couple of hours and then play. Or, as Paul Dunmall chose to do, ignore the Q-book and just improvise.

Send a request to shop@michielbraam.com and receive a free pdf of the Q-book!

Bio

For Michiel Braam (piano), Wilbert de Joode (bass) and Michael Vatcher (drums) freedom and adventure are essential values. They all play an absolutely equal role in the music, which can go in any which way, depending on decisions made on the spot. The long musical friendship (since 1990) results in intuitive playing of the highest order.
Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher shines in short powerful pieces, honoring the jazz tradition by pushing it ahead with consummate, dazzling skill. The trio combines a playful incorporation and expansion of older forms with a great adventurousness.
The trio first got together in 1990, to play the music of Thelonious Monk. Not long after that, their repertoire consisted solely of Michiel Braam's compositions.
Colors (CD BBB1) was inspired on the texts of American poet and radio voice Ken Nordine. For the program Change This Song (CD BBB8) he wrote 18 small compositions, which can be played in any given order, mood or style. All titles are anagrams of 'change this song', a reference to the trio's playful approach to the music.

In 2010 they presented the 'Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher Quartet'. For this project they invited a different guest musician for each performance: Fred Anderson, Paul Dunmall, Taylor Ho Bynum, Mats Gustafsson, Nils Wogram, to name a few.

The trio toured Europe, the US, Canada, Japan and Indonesia. Festivals include Yokohama (J); Rochester, Burlington, Chicago Umbrella Musicfest (US); Vancouver, Ottawa, Suoni per il Popolo Montreal (Canada); Bath International Music Festival (UK); Banlieues Bleues Paris, Le Mans (F); Wels (Aus); Tampere (Fin); Maijazz Stavanger, Nattjazz Bergen (N); North Sea Jazz Festival (NL)

"Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher is one of Europe's strongest groups, due in no small part to Braam's excellent composing." (Andrey Henkin, All About Jazz)

Trio BraamDeJoodeVatcher is financially supported by the Performing Arts Fund NL.

Reviews

Kwadratuur.be
Over the last two decades the trio of pianist Michiel Braam, double bass player Wilbert de Joode and drummer Michael Vatcher has developed into one of the most interesting small ensembles in Europe. What sets them apart is a relaxed relationship to jazz combined with a predilection for improvisation, adventure and experiment.
The title “Quartet' refers of course to the fact that for every concert a guest musician expands the trio into a quartet. It's great to hear this brilliant trio in such diverse combinations.

Critic's choice Chicago reader by Peter Margasak
Pianist Michiel Braam is one of the most exciting and prolific composers in jazz, but like most of his peers on the Dutch scene he doesn't hold his sheet music sacred. In fact, he seems to love running his songs through different permutations, both within a specific group and across formats, from solo to big band. He played here last year with his sextet, All Ears, and later this year his large group, Bik Bent Braam, will make its local debut at the Jazz Festival, but he may be best known in Chicago for his superb acoustic trio with bassist Wilbert de Joode and drummer Michael Vatcher. That group is featured on Change This Song (BBB), one of two new albums that draw from a suite of 18 Braam compositions. On the other, Hosting Changes (BBB), credited to the Wurli Trio, Braam plays many of the same songs on Wurlitzer electric keyboard, joined by a drummer and electric bassist. The electric group is sleeker and more fluid, but I think the acoustic trio is more rewarding. Braam has no problem reconciling historical impulses with more contemporary gestures, and like fellow Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg he's fond of exploding a hard-swinging line with a burst of dissonant clusters and spiky runs; Vatcher and de Joode take similar delight in upending the flow of the tunes. Onstage, any of them might call out a new song in midstream, which gives their concerts thrilling tension--but even if someone manages to pull the rug out from under the others, they always regain their footing, deftly and elegantly.
--Peter Margasak