Mondo Jazz

AFTERPARTY

Un compleanno dolce e amaro per Misha Mengelberg, straordinario pianista olandese, co-fondatore della Instant Composer Pool e sodale di Han Benninck in lunghi anni di scorribande sonore. Tre giorni fa su You Tube è stato pubblicato questo tenerissimo video con le note che riporto integralmente. 

Today, as I upload this video, it is exactly 50 years ago that pianist/composer MISHA MENGELBERG and his group recorded the legendary album "LAST DATE" with bassclarinettist/reedplayer ERIC DOLPHY in a live performance (only 3 weeks before ED died).

Yesterday, june 1 2014, some members of the INSTANT COMPOSERS POOL organised the first of three small & intimate concerts with and around their colleague & friend MM, who suffers Alzheimer's disease, in the BIMHUIS in Amsterdam. The idea for these concerts initiated after the public viewing of the documentary "Misha Enzovoort" dutch filmmaker Cherry Duyns (you see him waving to Misha in this clip) made of Misha and his way of coping with this dramatic disease in the same Bimhuis on march 28.

Presumably Misha's 79th birthday on the 5th of june plays a role in this as well. Fortunately I belong to the 'happy few' that could attend this concert in which sections of the ICP improvise with Misha, and I was allowed to film the performances. However, the images in this specific clip are not from the performance itself but from the moments right after the 'formal' concert that turned out to be -I think- very Misha-esque (hence the title "Afterparty").

It reminded me immediately of what he had told me in an interview years ago for dutch radio about what he had enjoyed so much in a concert of DUKE ELLINGTON & ORCHESTRA he saw as a young boy with his father (who was a newspaper music critic) in the Concertgebouw shortly after the war (around 1947/1948): the very spontaneous kind of musicmaking by DE as Misha noticed him playing solo on stage in the intermission before the audience was back on it's seats.

That it was possible to play music as informal as that impressed the young Misha deeply. Last sunday Misha remained at the piano while the musicians & audience after the performances were invited by the Bimhuis to enjoy some drinks & a lunch of oysters, and he himself did more or less the same as he as a kid had Duke Ellington seen doing more then 65 years ago.

Extra nice (and Misha-esque!) was, that during his sole playing, Emily, daughter of ICP bassplayer Ernst Glerum, joined him on piano for a very spontaneous quatre-mains. It is not unthinkable that this experience with Misha will be a lifelong memory for Emily as the informal Duke Ellington was an inspiration on him. Enjoy!

Filmed in the Bimhuis Amsterdam on sundag june 1 2014. Clip by Bas Andriessen.