Jeroen Van Herzeele Quartet

Jeroen Van Herzeele (saxophone), Fabian Fiorini (piano), Jean-Jacques Avenel (bass), Giovanni Barcella (drums)

In this international quartet, four top jazz musicians go in search of their own sound. John Coltrane is an important source of inspiration for this organic and intuitive developing music.

The 44 year-old saxophonist, Jeroen Van Herzeele, belongs to a generation of musicians – from Kris Defoort through Peter Hertmans to Fabrizio Cassol – that from the early nineties have given jazz a new élan. He has played with such well-known jazz musicians as Toots Thielemans and Philip Catherine and has already played in a number of bands, the main ones being Ode for Joe, Octurn, the Ben Sluijs quartet and Mâäk’s Spirit. He was also in Dreamtime, the larger ensemble of pianist Kris Defoort. A few years ago he put together a sort of fusion band called Greetings From Mercury which he really enjoyed doing, and which included a rapper with music that sometimes bordered on solid funk and acid jazz.

However, John Coltrane never let him go. As a young man he spent hours practicing Coltrane’s pieces. But Van Herzeele is anything but a clone. Whoever’s heard him playing in recent years heard mostly a saxophonist in search of something, someone who was very involved with sound and timbre. His phrasing has changed, and sometimes he appears to be gliding up and down through the sounds. It was exactly what Coltrane came face to face with in his later period: freed of the shackles of harmony and rhythm, with the room to allow the sounds to flow freely, arriving at a form of ecstasy.  

In recent years he has been playing as a duo with the Italian drummer, Giovanni Barcella, who now lives in Belgium. Neither is Barcella averse to experimenting and as drummer mainly works on sound and melody.  They’ve been playing for roughly two years together in the Gent club, El Negocito, a Chilean café-restaurant in Gent, where artists are given carte blanche. Starting out with basic idea, the quartet works out its music. The music is created very organically and intuitively. It’s also very expressive and cries out to take the audience along on its vibrations. Although Coltrane remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration, there are also influences from Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra and Frank Wright along with  African and ethnic tints.

In the quartet, Van Herzeele plays both his own compositions as well as those of his pianist Fabian Fiorini, and Steve Lacy and John Coltrane. The free and lyrical themes are often inspired by the last period in John Coltrane’s life (1965/1967). Fabian Fiorini is a demonic pianist who has two skilful and independent hands but also controls the harmonic structure and the rhythmic aspect. The French bassist, Jean-Jacques Avenel, worked for many years with the soprano sax player, Steve Lacy. His large resonating tone and his unswerving rhythm holds the music together and also acts as its engine. The quarter strives to create an atmosphere in which tone, timbre and texture predominate. The quartet is truly great live. They released their first album, ‘Da Mo’, on the W.E.R.F label at the beginning of this year.