IMN - International Music Network

Friday September 09, 2011

Tineke Postma’s “The Dawn Of Light” set for U.S. Release on September 13, 2011
By: Mitchell Feldman

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 (pronounced TEE-na-ka POST-ma) 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.

ABOUT THE MUSICIANS

TINEKE POSTMA
Tineke Postma has attracted a global following through touring and performing in clubs and at festivals in over 20 countries and rave reviews in the international press of her recordings “The Traveller” (2010) and “A Journey That Matters” (2007). Born in Heerenveen, The Netherlands, on August 31, 1978, Postma is the only Dutch artist featured along with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and other legends in the critically acclaimed four-part documentary “Icons Among Us – Jazz In The Present Tense” showcasing veteran and rising jazz artists. She also has the distinction of being the first European jazz musician signed by the respected American talent agency IMN (International Music Network) joining an illustrious roster of saxophonists including Shorter, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman, Chris Potter and Maceo Parker as well as other renowned artists like McCoy Tyner, Dianne Reeves, Dave Holland and Brad Mehldau. In 2009 Postma won the Jury Prize and the Audience Prize at the 49th Antibes Juan-Les-Pins Jazz Festival in France and was a finalist for the prestigious Paul Acket Award at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Postma was nominated for the Acket Award again in 2010. In addition, she received the international Sisters In Jazz All-Star Award, the Singer Laren Jazz Award, the Heijmans Award and the distinguished MIDEM International Jazz Révélation of the Year award in 2006 carried live during the French National TV gala broadcast ”Victoires du Jazz.” Postma earned an MA with honors from the Amsterdam Conservatory in 2003 and taught there from 2004-2009. She later received two scholarships to attend the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where she studied with Dick Oatts, David Liebman and Chris Potter. She has been a member of the Terri Lyne Carrington Group since 2008, performing with the drummer at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Ronnie Scott’s and other major venues around the world.

MARC van ROON
Pianist Marc van Roon is a multi-faceted improvising artist who has collaborated with Dave Liebman, Clark Terry, Art Farmer, Charlie Mariano, Billy Hart, Ernst Reijseger and Michael Moore among others. He co-leads the European Jazz Trio that has performed at Suntory Hall and Bunkyo Civic Concert Hall in Tokyo among other prestigious venues. Van Roon has released several albums as a leader on his independent label Apple On The Moon and is a member of the faculty of the Groningen Conservatory in The Netherlands.

FRANS van der HOEVEN
Frans van der Hoeven’s lyrical style and remarkable improvisations have established him as one of the leading jazz bassists in Europe. He has collaborated with Clark Terry, Woody Shaw, Barney Wilen, Jack DeJohnette, Harry Sweets Edison, Art Farmer, Ronnie Cuber, Tom Harrell, Lee Konitz, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Toots Thielemans and Kurt Rosenwinkel among others. A co-leader of the European Jazz Trio, van der Hoeven teaches at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and of The Hague in The Netherlands.

MARTIJN VINK
Martijn Vink is an extremely passionate instrumentalist with a peerless technique. The principal drummer of the internationally renowned Metropole Orchestra, Vink has also collaborated with Hank Jones, Patti Labelle, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Toots Thielemans and Chris Potter, among others.