Before we start with all adventures around the new album DARK HORSE, let's stand still for a second and look back to the events of 2025... For me it was a busy and buzzing year with lots of different & exciting stuff going on and more that I could wish for. I am truly grateful and humbled. Thank you, dear people and agencies who continue to want to work with me, thank you, dear concert audiences, music lovers, dear friends&family, new acquaintances, and also extra thanks to my own body who lets me do all this! I decided to put a reel together with some of the activities on stage to give you an impression. If your activitytogether with me is not there, it doesn't mean I didn't like it but maybe there was no video evidence.
There were even more off stage activities, therefore multiple shoutouts to: ArtEZ in Arnhem where I am teaching with a lot of joy, and these organisations/boards I am involved with and who contribute to our arts/music/jazz eco system: De Creatieve Coalitie, Bimpro.nl, VCTN, Kunstenbond Platformacct, Concertzender, BumaStemra, Stichting Brein. I wish you a happy and healthy new year and hope to see you again soon! P.s. Let's meet on 16th of January at Bimhuis! We will play the premiere of my new album DARK HORSE and there are still some tickets left.
This is the title track called Dark Horse. Just as in the album version it features sax and piano solos. It's a pretty wild performance, matching today's start of the Chinese New Year: THE YEAR OF THE FIRE HORSE!Live at Bimhuis, we added a drum solo. Afterwards, I decided to seperate it from the song and post it as an extra video below. Why not in one video?Because the video would become very very long and experience shows that people will not stick around for longer that 6-7 minutes. Yoràn's free drum solo is actually really great and in this seperate video, the true drum lovers can watch and learn from his drum story telling. Sometimes people ask me; What are drummers doing in their solos? To give you an idea of what Yoràn is doing in his solo: He starts with a pattern, an idea. He keeps the pattern going and plays variations over it. Then he combines it with soloing over it with call and reponse phrases and slides in new patterns. Technically it's interesting because he demonstrates a lot of independence and speed, as well as dynamics and sound colours, while telling a story, which means in musical context that the solo has certain elements which can be recognized by the (trained) listener. Many people in the Western part of the world miss the melodic and harmonic context during a free drum solo. It's fair to say a free drum solo without any accompaniment is like an abstract painting. Within the given context you can hear and see what you can manage, depending on your own frame of reference and expectations. In the end, it's about: does it resonate with you? Because both, the painting and the free drum solo, they lack a clear subject (no lyrics, no recognizable image), both forms are highly subjective and open to the interpretation of the audience. They function as a conversation between the artist's feeling and the viewer's/listener's perception.But you also can listen to it with a pure analytical drum ear and try to follow the patterns and phrases. As a musician and human I (try to) do both :-) Enjoy!More info:Susanne Alt: sax, Matthijs Geerts and Ike van Bergen: keys, Thomas Pol: bass, Yoràn Vroom: drums, Helene Jank: percussion Performed at 16th of January 2026 at Bimhuis, Amsterdam, Recorded by Onno Prillwitz Filmed by Robert Glass and Albert Nooij. - Before we start with all adventures around the new album DARK HORSE, let's stand still for a second and look back to the events of 2025...For me it was a busy and buzzing year with lots of different & exciting stuff going on and more that I could wish for. I am truly grateful and humbled. Thank you, dear people and agencies who continue to want to work with me, thank you, dear concert audiences, music lovers, dear friends&family, new acquaintances, and also extra thanks to my own body who lets me do all this! I decided to put a reel together with some of the activities on stage to give you an impression. If your activity together with me is not there, it doesn't mean I didn't like it but maybe there was no video evidence. There were even more off stage activities, therefore multiple shoutouts to: ArtEZ in Arnhem where I am teaching with a lot of joy, and these organisations/boards I am involved with and who contribute to our arts/music/jazz eco system: De Creatieve Coalitie, Bimpro.nl, VCTN, Kunstenbond Platformacct, Concertzender, BumaStemra, Stichting Brein. I wish you a happy and healthy new year and hope to see you again soon! P.s. Let's meet on 16th of January at Bimhuis! We will play the premiere of my new album DARK HORSE and there are still some tickets left.
