IMN - International Music Network

Tuesday September 13, 2011

From MFA – Jazz Radio Promotion, Publicity & Consulting

TINEKE POSTMA’s “THE DAWN OF LIGHT” SET FOR U.S. RELEASE 9/13/2011

Esperanza Spalding Appears As Special Guest On Acclaimed Dutch Saxophonist’s Fifth Album As A Leader And First For Challenge Records Distributed In The U.S. By Allegro

With the September 13, 2011 release in the U.S. of The Dawn of Light (Challenge Records CR73313), the award-winning Dutch saxophonist TINEKE POSTMA further expands the growing fan base for her music she established in America in 2010 with her critically acclaimed album The Traveller on which she was joined by the all-star rhythm section of pianist Geri Allen, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. The new CD solidifies Postma’s membership in an elite group of internationally renowned women instrumentalists, composers and bandleaders in jazz that includes Allen, Carrington, Esperanza Spalding, Maria Schneider and Anat Cohen.

On The Dawn Of Light, her fifth album as a leader which, like her previous release was nominated for an Edison Award (the Dutch equivalent of the Grammy), Postma showcases the working band she has led since 2006, an all-Dutch ensemble featuring Marc van Roon on keyboards, Frans van der Hoeven on double bass and Martijn Vink on drums. Esperanza Spalding, with whom Postma has performed as a member of bands the Grammy Award winning bassist and singer led at Carnegie Hall in New York, the North Sea Jazz Festival and elsewhere as well as in concert and on record with Carrington’s all-women jazz initiative The Mosaic Project, appears as a special guest vocalist on one track. As talented a composer as she is an instrumentalist, Postma introduces six new works on her latest CD including a musical setting for a poem by Pablo Neruda sung by Spalding, a duo arrangement for alto sax and piano of Thelonious Monk’s “Off Minor” (her first recording of a work by this modern jazz master whose music has been a significant inspiration) and a quartet arrangement of a section from an orchestral suite based on Brazilian folk music that Heitor Villa-Lobos composed in 1958. Two compositions by van Roon round out the CD.

“I love improvising and I’m really happy to have the luxury to express myself through jazz because the music allows my creativity to go anywhere,” Postma said in an interview published by AllAboutJazz.com in June 2011 shortly after The Dawn Of Light was released in Europe. “I especially enjoy the interaction between musicians on stage,” she continued. “I’m not the kind of artist who only wants to play a solo, show what I can do and be on my own little island on stage. I prefer collective improvisation and engaging in a dialogue with all the musicians around me. I think that’s really magical and so diverse,” she added. “Art is very important in its ability to keep people inspired and in touch with spiritual and social parts of life and jazz can make people grow and develop creative thinking; it touches all those aspects. For me, music is an expression of life,” Postma explained. “The way I stand in life will affect the way I am a musician. Life is magic and everything we do, everybody we meet can teach us and inspire us. I feel very lucky to be a musician, because it gives me the chance to travel, to experience different cultures and to meet new and interesting people. Because music is such a direct expression of how I feel or stand in life, it reflects my being. I consider it a great path.”

Postma has drawn upon her life experiences and influences as inspirations for the compositions on The Dawn Of Light that range from the dynamic “Falling Scales,” whose title sums up the flowing form and content of the piece, to the ballad “Before The Snow” inspired by the cold serenity of a Northern European winter. On “Leave Me a Place Underground,” Postma’s soprano saxophone provides the sinuous setting within which Spalding interweaves Neruda’s poem both in words and in flights of vocalese. The groove of “The Observer” alternates between the space of playing free and the structure of swing while the funk of “The Man Who Stared At Coats” is accentuated by van Roon’s work on the Fender Rhodes and Korg synthesizer. Postma concludes the CD with the easy-going “Tell It Like It Is,” a tune she refers to as the CD’s “feel-good” track with an easy-going vibe that culminates in surprise rhythmic twists.

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