This time a throwback to only 4 months ago, when Amber Gomaa , Eva Korse and I were invited to play as soloists together with the Buitenkunst Funkjazz project bigband. Drummer Eva Korse wrote the (small) bigband arrangements. Amber, Eva and I had a great afternoon rehearsing and performing these tunes the band already practised for 2 days. Really nice to perform this song from album "Saxify" live! Berenice van Leer had written the lyrics to. And it was so cool that Amber took the effort to really study the song precisely as Berenice had recorded it but also added her own personality to it. The bigband consists of parttime musicians, often teachers or musicians who used to be professional but changed jobs later in life. Buitenkunst is a great institution; people can go camping or glamping and follow workshops in music and other arts. Thank you for the invitation, Arthur Schmidt (Buitenkunst)!
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. - This time a throwback to only 4 months ago, when Amber Gomaa , Eva Korse and I were invited to play as soloists together with the Buitenkunst Funkjazz project bigband.Drummer Eva Korse wrote the (small) bigband arrangements. Amber, Eva and I had a great afternoon rehearsing and performing these tunes the band already practised for 2 days.Really nice to perform this song from album Saxify live! Berenice van Leer had written the lyrics to. And it was so cool that Amber took the effort to really study the song precisely as Berenice had recorded it but also added her own personality to it. The bigband consists of parttime musicians, often teachers or musicians who used to be professional but changed jobs later in life. Buitenkunst is a great institution; people can go camping or glamping and follow workshops in music and other arts. Thank you for the invitation, Arthur Schmidt (Buitenkunst)!P.s. here's the original track:
