So if it’s not David Bowie what is it from Dutch saxophonist Yuri Honing? Answers on a postcard please to the laughing gnome. So, it’s a well trodden path even with a jazz angle. And we have been here before. Because I seem to recall a fine inspired Bowie work by English drummer Dylan Howe a decade ago focusing however more particularly on Bowie’s Berlin period.
The Honing quartet live at Amsterdam jazz club the Bimhuis back in June this year l-r Wolfert Brederode, Honing, Gulli Gudmundsson and Joost Lijbaart playing a live version of ‘Sweet Thing’ a Diamond Dogs (1974) number that is also chosen for the last selection of the new studio album
No guitars or vocals, note. Instead it is a, sax & piano trio affair – the altoist leader with pianist Wolfert Brederode, double bassist Gulli Gudmundsson and drummer Joost Lijbaart. Brederode – whose chops and sensibility (no exaggeration) are of Brad Mehldau calibre – is a star in his own right – was with Lijbaart on the superbly brooding Ruins and Remains I loved in 2022. And he contributes a lot to the infrastructure and even more significantly poeticism on top that cascades out of every pore of the group sound.
The quartet use fragments of Bowie’s harmonies, atmospheres, and melodies as creative springboards, according to the label. Tunes include ‘The Man Who’s Sold The World,’ ‘Warszawa,’ and ‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’. Honing has in recent years released at regular intervials via the same label Heaven On My Mind (2023), Bluebeard (2020), Goldbrun (2017) and Desire (2015).
1972’s ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ one of the Bowie classics that Yuri Honing interprets on his new album just released
The Hilversum born 61 year-old’s fascination with reinterpreting pop and rock icons through a jazz lens goes way back to his international breakthrough “classic”, and it was a classic – no need for sarky scare quotes – Star Tracks (1996, Jazz in Motion) which Lijbaart was also on, a work that transformed such on the face of it unappetising fare as pop from ABBA and Sting into jazz that made sense and challenged your perceptions, pet likes and dislikes to do with that idiom. Honing’s approach was just as valid and stimulating as that of The Bad Plus when they debuted in similarly minded fashion albeit designed for a piano trio. This latest is no different and works on its own merits. It has an ache and blueness to it that is compelling and truth be told rather stirring.
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