Saturday 15th October 2022, 17:00 – House of Hard Bop. Dick Vennik (flute, sax, base clarinet ) passed away recently. For 25 years he was the frontman of the Rein de Graaff/Dick Vennik Quartet, with bass Koos Serierse, and drummer Eric Ineke. With roots in hardbop, the quartet later also went into modal territory, with excursions into the free field.
In 1977 the album Modal Soul appeared. As the title would suggest the music is based on chord progressions (modi). This development in musical thinking started in the 60’s, with musicians such as Miles Davis, and the John Coltrane Quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner. Chord schemes and standard forms ( for instance AA’BA, 4×8 time) no longer form the basis of a composition. The forms are freer and the melodic improvisations are not so strictly bound to chord changes at specific moments.
The five Modal Soul pieces in this programme – with obviously recognisable influences from Coltrane and Tyner – are bursting with energy!
With All Blues from the record Cloud People (1984) we’re back to fixed forms. This Miles Davis piece – from the groundbreaking album Kind of Blue (1959) – gets here, particularly in metric terms, a very individual treatment.
Dick Vennik’s brilliant flute playing can be heard to its best effect in his short piece Lothlorien, for flute and piano. Clear melodic lines float high in the air above the accompaniment.
In his long career Vennik took his own path in a number of different styles. Occasionally he also took the turning to free improvisation. But in 2005 he said in unmistakenable terms about free jazz: “Nihilistic, public torturing, in fact horrible reactionary noise.”
House of Hard Bop – a programme by drummer Eric Ineke
