Jazz Bulletin

Within a few days this daily Keep swinging blogspot will have been a half year online. There are a dozen regular visitors I like to thank for joining it every day. To find them I made a small quiz. The next three days I will post a part of a band name that will become the subject of the 183rd blog. If you can tell me that name you'll be in the race for a nice present. Good luck

first word: Syncopated

There are three or four serious jazz magazines in the Netherlands at the moment. Magazines released, not as a regular news sites or blog, but printed on paper, not addressed to a small group of persons.

There are two glossy magazines, dedicated to all kinds of jazz-related subjects ( like soul - blues - world - urban), titled Jazz and Jazz-ism. Both magazines have the same target group. I think one of the two won't survive.

Third one is the Jazz Bulletin, the informative magazine published by the Dutch Jazz Archive. Its subject are always related to the jazz scene in Holland.

Fourth might be the Doctor Jazz Magazine, the oldest magazine of the four mentioned and related to more traditional style jazz. I'm not sure if it should be in this small list, as it is related to a membership of the Doctor Jazz Reunion.

The first two magazines are, glossy ones, with articles about music, lifestyle, travel and gadgets. There are only a few articles each month, that interest me.

Some days ago the 60th number of the Jazz Bulletin was released. And to be fair, all articles interested me. The magazine has beautiful black and white photos ( shouldn't jazz photos always be in black and white?) and contains an interview with Yuri Honing, a Dutch saxophone player, an article about Fritz Müller, a Dutch clarinet player and jazz promotor, that passed away May 2006 and a very interesting article about the four tours early 1960s John Coltrane made in the Netherlands; about the confrontation with his new way to make music ( or noises, depending what critic you want to quote). There is an article about the leader of the Kovacs Lajos Band (dir. by Louis Schmidt) and an article about the jazz collection of Egbert de Bloeme, former chairman of the Dutch Jazz Archive. The regular colums, like Postuum ( = Phostumous) , Donaties (Gifts to the Archive) and Jan J. Mulder's column Jan J.Mulder blikt 50 jaar terug about the music scene in 1956.

It's a pity that the magazine is written entirely in Dutch. I think it should be ( partly) in English, like the areticles interesting for foreign readers ( like the Coltrane article)

For me the Jazz Bulletin is one of the best jazz magazine now available in the Netherlands.

Don't forget to open the blog tomorrow for the second word in our little quiz.