Keep (it) Swinging: Duets: Stevko Busch - Paul Van Kemenade: Contemplation

Stevko Busch en Paul van Kemenade in duet: Contemplation (Nederlands) Duets: Stevko Busch - Paul Van Kemenade: Contemplation (English)

Songs, Russian Chants and Miniatures.
DUETS: STEVKO BUSCH - PAUL VAN KEMENADE: CONTEMPLATION
Hans Koert

A few month ago a new album by the Busch - Van Kemenade duo has been released. This album, entitled Contemplation, contains piano-alto saxophone duets from piano player Stevko Busch and Dutch saxophonist Paul Van Kemenade.

Listen to a fragment of a tune entitled Resolution, to be found as one of the tracks on the album, as played by Stevko Busch and Paul van Kemenade.

Stevko Busch
Stevko Busch, 1966 German born piano player, finished the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam 15 years ago. He played with musicians like Willem Van Manen and Misha Mengelberg and both inspired him. In 2001 he received the Jazz Art Award with his trio Box of Toads, which played electronic music. He plays with Paul Van Kemenade for years - often duo concerts, but it was never recorded until this year.Paul Van Kemenade

Paul Van Kemenade, born in Rotterdam (1957), is a well known and skilled alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader and promoter and organizer of the Stranger Than Paranoia festival in the Tilburg Paradox, always scheduled in the last week of December. Shame on me - I've never heard him alive in concert. He received the Boy Edgar award 10 years ago and the jury labelled him as een altsaxofinist met lef ( = an alto saxophone player with guts.).
He started his musical career in studio bands that accompanied then famous Dutch vocalists like Ben Cramer and Ronnie Tober and even accompanied Herbert "Kluk-Kluk" Joeks, ( Dutch "kids' from the 1970s will remember this "indian" ) before he started to explore the jazz with Niko Langenhuijsen in his Gemeentereinigingsorkest Vaalbleek. This was all long ago and since that days, Paul has organized numerous projects: dance-projects, projects with big bands, performers, poets and painters, but also with musicians like Han Bennink, Ernst Glerum, Wouter Wierbos and Misha Mengelberg; the Alexander Von Schlippenbach's Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra and international known musicians like Kenny Werner, Ed Thigpen, Benny Bailey and Aki Takase . It learns that he is busy like a bee.
He's not the guy to walk the beaten paths. In an interview with Jeroen de Valk ( Boy Edgar-winnaar Paul van Kemenade - Een intens solist ( Jazz Nu nr. 244 (Dec. 1999) he says to be fascinated by world music: Ik heb het gevoel dat ik net aan een wereldreis ben begonnen. ( = I’ve got a feeling that I just started a journey around the world). He unfolds his plans to start a big band. .... an orchestra with various settings, not only Dutchmen, but also from Africa, Surinam, Europe - you name it. This band, the Stranger Than Paranoia-Big Band performs nowadays at the festival with the same name.

This duo recordings with Stevko Busch fit into his ideas to create cross-border music. The album contains 16 tracks, Contemplation: five tracks composed by Busch and Van Kemenade are labelled that way; improvisations based on Russian Orthodox chants ( collected by Stevko Busch) and some compositions by the South African jazz saxophonist and composer Dollar Brand ( since 1976 named: Abdullah Ibrahim).

Stevko Busch
Duets - introverted improvisations - like painted Russian Orthodox icons, make this selection an album that I played several times - which unfolds new elements to me each times I played it.

The duo Busch-Van Kemenade is a solid team for years - Listen to a fragment of the tune Walkafrique, recorded more then two years ago at the Goethe Institute in Amsterdam. This tune is not on the album, but shows the unique cooperation between these two artists.

You can find more info about how to obtain this recording at this site.

Hans Koert

keepswinging@live.nl

Paul van Kemenade's discography contains dozens of recordings and he was involved in numerous projects. A few months ago a new record was released - Contemplation - in duo with the German piano player Stevko Busch. They were inspired bysongs, Russian Chants and miniatures. Stevko Busch - Paul van Kemenade: Contemplation. The Keep Swinging blog loves to inform you about this kind of projects, but also about other aspects in jazz. If you love to follow it all, ask for its newsletter.