Ab Baars, Guus Janssen, Maarten Van Veen

Compositions and Improvisations
FRI 22 JAN 2010 20.00, Pianolab Goethe Institut, Amsterdam (NL)

Ab Baars – clarinet, Guus Jansen – piano
Improviser and Composer – Two sides of Guus Janssen

Maarten van Veen · piano, Heleen Hulst · violin, Rebecca Smit · cello
Willem Jeths: Piano Trio
G.Janssen: Mikado
Ron Ford: Brandelli (2004)

We gladly accept the proposal of Ab Baars to present his duet with Guus Janssen at Pianolab.Amsterdam.
Guus Janssen’s work has for years been a realisation of Pianolab’s most important vision – that contemporary composed and improvised music are extensions of each other, that there is more that unites them than divides them. His composition ‘Mikado’ will be performed by pianist Maarten van Veen, whom he has recommended, and the renowned Doelen Ensemble.
All the musicians in this concert are leading figures in Dutch music – and highly regarded internationally.

Ab Baars

He is an improvising musician/composer and bandleader and plays tenor saxophone, clarinet and shakuhachi. In 1989 he received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture to study with clarinetist/composer John Carter in Los Angeles. That same year Baars received the prestigious Boy Edgar Prize. He has received various grants and commissions from the Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst and the Nederlands Fonds voor de Podiumkunsten+.

Ab Baars is internationally acclaimed for both his solo work and his music for improvisation groups, with whom he tours Europe, North America, Japan and Australia.
He mainly concentrates on the Ab Baars Trio, the Duo Baars-Henneman, on solo concerts and the ICP Orchestra.

He has worked with musicians such as Sunny Murray, The Ex, Steve Lacy, Roswell Rudd, Sonic Youth, and Ken Vandermark. In 1991 he founded the Ab Baars Trio with bassist Wilbert de Joode and drummer Martin van Duynhoven.

Ab Baars doesn’t play jazz ‘or any other style’, but ‘Ab-music’, as the nestor of Dutch jazz and improvisation music Misha Mengelberg once remarked.
Baars can be heard on various CD’s of the labels Wig, Data, ICP and Geestgronden.

Guus Janssen

The music of Guus Janssen (1951) is difficult to categorise. It can be a composed improvisation (Brake for piano solo) or an improvised composition (parts from his Violin Concerto and his opera Noah). Music, like life itself, sometimes requires quick decisions and sometimes a long period of reflection.

As pianist and harpsichordist he performed in various line-ups with musicians ranging from John Zorn to Gidon Kremer. Since the early 1980s he has led his own ensembles, from (piano) trio to 11-tet and (opera) orchestra. As a soloist he performed, mainly in his own compositions, and as an improviser at various international festivals.

Janssen’s compositions range from piano music and chamber music to symphonic works and opera. They were performed by leading Dutch and foreign orchestras and ensembles. Two operas were premiered by the Nederlandse Operastichting.

Maarten van Veen (1971)

descended from a musical family, began his piano studies at an early age, and gave his first concert at the age of thirteen. He studied at the conservatories in Utrecht, Prague and Amsterdam with Alwin Bär, Kyoko Hashimoto and Ton Hartsuiker. He took master classes with György Sebök and during his studies at the Mozart Academy with Oleg Maisenberg, Ivan Klánsky, David Golub and Leonid Hambro. Van Veen completed his U.M. studies at the Sweelinck Conservatory as the first pianist in history to play both a classical and a contemporary programme (’97).

During the Postbank-Sweelinck Competition in 1995 he received a special prize for the performance of contemporary compositions. In the same year he won the 4th Murray Dranoff two piano competition (U.S.A.) together with his brother Jeroen. In France van Veen was awarded the SACEM prize during ‘The Piano competition of 20th century music 1996′ in Orleans with the title: ‘candidate with the best personal vision on music of the 20th century’.
He gave concerts in Sweden, France, Belgium, England, Germany, Czech Republic and Hungary and toured the United States and Canada several times, playing with various orchestras and conductors such as Peter Eötvös, Howard Williams, Arie van Beek, Neal Stulberg, Christopher Hogwood, Henrik Schaefer, Lev Markiz, Lucas Vis, Jurjen Hempel, Etienne Siebens, Peter Oundjian and Robert Craft. With Robert Craft he recorded several works by Igor Stravinsky on CD at Abbey Road Studios in London, which were noted in the New York Times (2002) as ‘the best recordings ever’.
He is the founder of the International Piano Quartet (1998, 4 pianos) with which he has toured Canada and the U.S.A. several times. In the Netherlands Van Veen is a member of the artistic council of the DoelenEnsemble (Rotterdam), which offers a panorama of the 20th century in its programming. Since 2003 he is also a member of the Hortusensemble (Amsterdam). Since 2007 he is also Artistic Director for the Murray Dranoff Foundation in Florida (U.S.A.) In his search for authentic performances of music written between 1820 and 1950, he found the instruments of the same era (e.g. Erard and Pleyel) a source of insight into pianistics as well as an explanation of many compositional techniques of the composers associated with these instruments. These instruments offer Van Veen the opportunity to use these insights, which lead to a new language, to recreate and, where necessary, revise the narrative art of this music. He has played at various festivals such as Wien Modern, Nederlandse Muziekdagen, Festival Rhijnauwen and the Adams Festival. He has made many radio recordings and has recorded works for labels such as Naxos and Koch. Recently he has also been active as a conductor.