Over het album

This is happy music, chock-a-block with fresh voicings, counter-melodies, and intriguing harmonic choices, and it requires for its proper execution a cohort fully trained in the idiomatic particulars of hard swinging, as Beets and his JOC colleagues most demonstrably are.

Virtuoso pianists operate at such rarefied levels of technique and harmonic acumen as to transform their instrument into a virtual orchestra, which is perhaps the reason why they appear so rarely as a primary soloist in the major big bands of the jazz canon. Such canonic pianist-bandleaders as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jay McShann, Claude Thornhill, Francy Boland, and even Misha Mengelberg with the ICP Orchestra, imprinted their singular tonal personalities on their units less through pianistic derring-do than the force of their ideas and personal style. There are, of course, exceptions—among them Earl Hines, who liked to interpolate his majestic declamations between band numbers; Mary Lou Williams with Andy Kirk; Jess Stacy and Mel Powell with Benny Goodman; Roland Hanna and Jim McNeely with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra.

Add to this list the third recording by the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw on the Dutch series division of their imprint label, documenting a quasi piano concerto constructed from nine well-wrought compositions by JOC pianist Peter Beets and a single reimagined standard.

Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw
Henk Meutgeert: conductor
Joris Roelofs: lead alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet, flute
Jorg Kaaij: alto saxophone, flute
Simon Rigter: tenor saxophone
Sjoerd Dijkhuizen: tenor saxophone, clarinet
Juan Martinez: baritone saxophone, bass clarinet
Jelle Schouten: lead trumpet, flugelhorn
Wim Both: trumpet, flugelhorn
Rini Swinkels: trumpet, flugelhorn
Ruud Breuls: trumpet, flugelhorn
Jan van Duikeren: trumpet, flugelhorn
Martijn Sohier: lead trombone
Hansjörg Fink: trombone
Bert Boeren: trombone
Martien de Kam: bass trombone
Martijn van Iterson: guitar
Peter Beets: piano
Frans van Geest: double bass
Martijn Vink: drums