Tyneside is set to go Dutch

Pianist Dominic J Marshall leads a mini-invasion of Tyneside by musicians from Amsterdam in late March and early April.

Marshall is no stranger to the local jazz audience, having played a number of enthusiastically received Newcastle gigs beginning when he was a student at Leeds College of Music and leading a trio with fellow Leeds graduates Sam Vicary and Sam Gardner.

Having taken his master’s degree in Amsterdam, Marshall is now resident in the Netherlands, which makes him eligible for the Going Dutch initiative set up by the Jazz Promotion Network in conjunction with Dutch Performing Arts to bring musicians to the UK and Ireland over the next eighteen months. 

Going Dutch is also facilitating visits to Gateshead Jazz Festival for the Slovenian-born pianist Kaja Draksler, who earned rave responses for her solo piano concert in Newcastle last summer, and the Nordanians, who blend jazz improvisation with virtuosic investigations of traditional music from across the world including Indian raga forms.

Dominic J Marshall’s gig at the Globe in Railway Street on Thursday 29th March is noteworthy for being the first time he has brought his new trio to Newcastle. Including bassist Glenn Gaddum Jnr and drummer Jamie Peet, the group featured on Marshall’s Triolithic album, which was listed as one of Jazzwise magazine’s top 20 albums of 2016 and nominated for a prestigious Edison Award, the Netherlands’ equivalent of a Grammy.

Since his last visit, as well as switching from a double bassist to a bass guitarist in his group, Marshall has also begun singing onstage, which he describes as “frightening” initially, adding that it was something the music he was creating demanded.

Marshall is followed by Draksler, again playing solo, in a Gateshead Jazz Festival piano concert that also features the UK’s Alexander Hawkins, Serbian Bojan Z and Italian Giovanni Guidi on Friday 6^th April. The Nordanians, who feature violist Oene van Geel, guitarist Mark Tuinstra and tabla player Niti Ranjan Biswas, appear at the festival on Saturday 7^th April in a Jazz Goes East presentation with London-based tabla player-producer Sarathy Korwar’s quartet.

Rob Adams.