It’s Tuesday night at the Bimhuis jazz club in Amsterdam, and the room is dominated by a rambunctious crowd of twenty-somethings who use English and Spanish to communicate. It is not an end-of-year excursion that has taken its wrong way through the nearby red light district, it is jazz fans, many of them students from the conservatory, who have come to claim the proposal that every Tuesday gives the stage to future values of the genre. They are the Rough Diamonds, free concerts that allow the next generation of musicians to perform on a stage that goes beyond the narrow and dark stage that one imagines when talking about jazz.
This evening is the turn of the flutist Ringa Karahona, who performs together with the trio Luz, formed by the double bass Ton Felices, a young talent from Vilafranca del Penedès who, at just over 20 years of age, represents the prototype of a jazz student at the Amsterdam Conservatory: young , foreign and loaded with talent, like 90% of the students, who arrive attracted by the aid and facilities to develop their career.
Many in the stands know Ton, applaud and cheer him on, among them a handful of Catalans who have arrived that same day in the city of canals to take part in inJazz, the main professional jazz festival in the Netherlands. An important appointment on the calendar for concert programmers, who meet for two days in the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam to book performances, close deals and attend performances in the form of showcases where musicians present their projects to halls, clubs and festivals.
This year the inJazz festival celebrates its 16th edition, and has invited a Catalan delegation to the event, a focus that returns the invitation received last March by the Jazz I Am festival, an event of similar characteristics held in Barcelona and organized by Musician’s Workshop. Programmers from festivals such as l’Estartit, Cambrils or Vic, envoys from venues such as the Jamboree or the Milano Jazz club, as well as artist representatives met in the delegation sponsored by Catalan Arts, the international promotion branch of the Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals, to learn about the music scene in the Netherlands. An exchange between festivals that reflects the deep-rooted musical connection between both territories, as demonstrated by the number of Catalan musicians who carry out part of their studies there, and sometimes their careers.
“There is a connection with the students that does not exist between other countries”, explains Rosa Galbany, from the Taller de Músics, part of the Catalan delegation at inJazz, “we have been creating links on a professional level for years, we are in contact and we give each other feedback”. , although he acknowledges that in Catalonia “we are still a bit in tow”. When comparing both ecosystems, Galbany highlights the role of Buma Cultuur, the Dutch equivalent of the Sgae: “They pay very high caches, they help mobility a lot and they make everything very easy.” They are the ones in charge of financing inJazz, while Jazz I Am comes from private funds and public aid. “We have aid, but it is through a project that you have to present, justify, explaining the theory, the practice and everything, it is not as simple as there”, a difference due to the fact that in our country “culture is not considered necessary “, the Mint.
To get an idea of ??what jazz students are looking for in the city of canals, just go to the Bimhuis, one of the most traditional clubs, which since 2005 has been located in the Piet Heinkade, one of the most modern districts from the city. The building was built by the municipality of Amsterdam and rented to the Bimhuis jazz club, which was thus able to leave its premises on Oudeschans street, near the current red light district, where it was born in 1974. It soon became a meeting point for fans with their jam sessions on a stage in the form of an amphitheater whose spirit is maintained in the new Bimhuis, the club of the future for aesthetics, sound and functionality.
The new building is visible from afar, a dark box suspended in the air by pylons and attached to the Muzik Gebouw, the concert hall with which it shares space. Forget the typical dark jazz clubs, housed in hidden underground. The Bimhuis is the club of the future for aesthetics, sound and functionality, an “Ikea box” as defined by Guim Cifré, programmer for the Milano Jazz club in Barcelona, ??amazed by the functionality of the facilities. Rehearsal rooms, recording studio, warehouses full of instruments available to the musicians and an elevator that gives direct access to the concert hall to assemble and disassemble the stage at full speed.
The club receives public aid that represents 33% of the budget. This is where the free concerts by new artists come from or the commitment to always pay all musicians well. This money allows for daring programming that results in attracting an audience fed by the jazz schools and the love for the genre that exists in the city. The room has top-level audiovisual equipment and the performances are included in videos that are posted on YouTube. The images and sound tracks are available to the artists for their private use and promotion, which means great savings for them. “Everything is very different,” explains trumpeter Alba Careta, who has studied in The Hague and Amsterdam. “You listen to the people who have come, their experiences, the openness to the world and the teachers”, she emphasizes when reasoning why she traveled to the Netherlands, adding the facilities to access the schools. “Here they didn’t ask me for any written project, on the other hand in Barcelona they did”, she points out, recalling that “to do a written project you need a lot of time and very clear ideas”.
After the inaugural session, the festival moved to Rotterdam with its epicenter at the Lantaren Venstern, which hosted the showcases of the Catalan delegation: Martin Leiton Quartet, JF Trio and the Alba Careta Group, who presented their proposals to international programmers on stages where Alto for Two was also heard, a quintet with the presence of the saxophone Irene Reig and the pianist Xavi Torres, Catalan musicians established in the Netherlands.
“Our musicians are on a par with those here,” says Jordi Pujol from the experience that his work at the helm of the veteran Fresh Sound Records label gives him. An opinion shared by the programmers, who closed agreements like the one between Alto for Two with a German record company that will produce their next work, or as the gigs that took place during the fair show to give wings to Catalan jazz beyond their, in occasions, small borders.
