Han Bennink - Jaak Sooäär

Drummer Han Bennink is one of the legends of European jazz. This spring the renowned musician and artist celebrates his 70th birthday. Estonian audience will see him perform with the noted Estonian guitarist Jaak Sooäär.

Han Bennik

Since the mid 1960s, Dutch percussionist Han Bennink has been an entrenched member of the avant-garde jazz elite, thanks to his colorful, synergistic, always playful and always masterful drum work, which has allowed him to be successful in virtually any context, at any style of jazz. Bennink is especially famous for his inventive approach to his kit, which has included the use of various unconventional rhythm-making devices, including pieces of wood, sheet metal, and even pizza boxes. His musical curiosity has naturally drawn him out from behind the kit as well, and he has performed on the saxophone, piano, clarinet, trombone, and harmonica. Drums, however, have remained his passion throughout his career.

Drummer and multi – instrumentalist Han Bennink was born in Zaandam near Amsterdam in 1942. His first percussion instrument was a kitchen chair. Later his father, an orchestra percussionist, supplied him with a more conventional outfit, but Han never lost his taste for coaxing sounds from unlikely objects he finds backstage at concerts. In Holland in the 1960s, Bennink was quickly recognized as an uncommonly versatile drummer. As a hard swinger in the tradition of his hero Kenny Clarke, he accompanied touring American jazz stars, including Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, Johnny Griffin, Eric Dolphy and Dexter Gordon. At the same time, Bennink participated in the creation of a European improvised music which began to evolve a new identity, apart from its jazz roots.

Bennink attended art school in the 1960s, and is also a successful visual artist in media, having designed the covers for many LPs and CDs on which he appears. From the late 1960s through the ‘70s Bennink collaborated frequently with Danish, German, and Belgian musicians, notably saxophonists John Tchicai and Peter Brotzmann, guitarist Derek Bailey and pianist Fred van Hove. From 1988 to ‘98 Bennink’s main vehicle was Clusone 3, with saxophonist and clarinetist Michael Moore and cellist Ernst Reijseger, a band noted for its free-wheeling mix of swinging jazz standards, wide - open improvising, and tender ballads. Clusone played Europe and North America, West Africa, China, Vietnam and Australia, and recorded five CDs.

In 2003 at Jazzkaar program was co-operation concert of Estonian guitar-player Jaak Sooäär and Dutch percussionist Han Bennink and very talented Finnish saxophone player Mikko Innanen. This stuff released CD, live recording from the concert in Helsinki.