Fri 4 Apr – Young Vips On Tour Sociëteit De Burcht, Leiden.
Travelling around the country all day, Coach Bertels is ready for some good old entertainment during the evening time in the beautiful city of Leiden by traffic light glows. So he slips into something casual, goes downstairs into the stables and prepares the iron horse for a spin. Dinner at Zorba the Greek is always a feast! Very nice place. Excellent service. Prime traditional Greek meals. This place has all the extra’s you’d expect from a five Michelin stars Restaurant; A TV taped to its steel armature, the displaced ceiling full with grease from the fry pan and the dirty ventilator with bent blades in the middle of it. Canned drinks. Gastronome heaven ;-)
It took a while to consume the huge Greek dish Coach got served, almost choked on it but the canned beers made it so much easier. Don’t blame Zorba, he’s a good guy trying to survive and earn some money to feed his family of six. He seemed a bit down by the way, normally he sings old Greek Tales whilst preparing the meals.
Being fed up, Coach waggles towards the old line of defence. De Burcht. This masterpiece of engineering protected the wealthy and rich of Leiden from the Spanish conquerors during the war that lasted 80 years. Very special detail is that this round little fortress sits in the middle of Leiden, which meant that the Spanish had no problem conquering the city and the rich had locked themselves in there own prison. Well done!!
Throw a stone from De Burcht and you’ll hit the Sociëteit, a nice old style bar where live jazz music would fit best to the interior and atmosphere. Occasionally a celebrity is being naughty here but most of the time it’s just your perfect hang out. Downstairs they have a small venue called “Tuinzaal”, it was here where Coach had a great time that faithful night during the Young VIPs On Tour – Double concert. The venue was filling up already with mostly elderly folks as Coach made his entry, he must have been the youngest spectator because the very nice people selling the tickets asked the Coach how on earth he’d ever heard of this gig and what made him persuade to come over to experience it. “Well” Bertels replied, “It just so happened to be raining when I got all the way from Arnhem to this remote city in the west as my umbrella suddenly reappeared out of the bleu!” Hah! That stunned them! Then he carefully selected a seat and waited for what was meant to be. It was meant to be a silly old man with orange hat and a sash in the national colours waving a little Dutch flag. This guy looked just like Foppe de Haan, a famous soccer trainer who is going to make the Dutch World Champion some day. Foppe started to thank everybody for coming, he explained the origin of the Young VIPs on tour concept and that after this 2008 tour there will be a 2009 tour in the next year. Then when the audience was totally quiet, he told us a story of the missing mayors chain and the involvement of Zwiebertje in this case. Just minutes before he started to address us he had spoken to Bromsnor and Saartje, they were not surprised Zwiebertje had something to do with it. The story remained endless as Foppe broke it of to introduce the musicians.
Bram Stadhouders Tonelist Trio. Foppe needed a full five minutes to name all the great musicians they had already played with and all the successes they had and all their history, it seemed the folks he was introducing were at least 60 years old, but when they came the were just teenagers! Foppe turns out to be a great stand up comedian and music promoter!
Bram Stadhouders plays an electronic guitar in a jazzy style but whit that minimalistic new age twist, that is in pulling a string and shaping the sound through a laptop. He just stood there and pulled a string every now and then, but very ambient and nice sounding. The other kid “played” a drum set and percussion. He was so occupied capturing sounds from bells, sticks, drums, beat box, brush, bottles and megaphones that he became the show.
Third in this trio was the lady taking care of the overall sound in the back of the venue, she was surrounded by like 5 computers and still managed to pull one or three switches during the gig. Awesome!!
There sound is very interesting and new, free improvisation jazz, almost everybody liked it measured by the applause. Only, after three songs (no lyrics…) there should have been more change in the music. It was all very good, but alike. Foppe surprised them with a scream and some flower bulbs in a pot, his way of thanking the artists. Intermission, time for a chatter, drinks and re decorate the stage with new instruments.
During the break Foppe had spoken to Bromsnor again, he was to busy protecting Wilders and Verdonk, not having the time or resources to go after the missing mayor’s chain… little disappointing Foppe! But the next introduction made everything forget.
Soo Cho Trio &
Angelo Verploegen.
Soo Cho, a young South Korean Pianist, came to Holland after Classic College, to learn more about jazz. Now she’s doing a masters degree in compositions. She has already played with great musicians as
Eric Vloeimans,
Jasper Blom and
Hein van der Geijn. And now with Angelo Verploegen and
Daniel Lottesberger on this tour. Real jazz! Most of the elder folks in the audience feel more at home now as they applause for every little solo during a song. All the compositions were by Soo Cho, although the very first one had very similar tunes as this fine track by
Erik Truffaz. Very nice jazz music for a quiet crowd, isn’t this kind of music better of in a little busier place? With people fizzing, laughter and glasses clinging? We kept on applauding until an anchore was given, great show. Foppe gave the artist some more pots with bulbs and he thanked all of us for coming out of our holes tonight. Later he was spotted whilst making videos of the audience; he even zoomed in on this guys hat by closing in on him and hold the camera 2 inches from the hat. All very seriously….Hah, Foppe rules!!!
Eric Vloeimans