Holland Baroque Society is a liberal Dutch baroque company. The four women who form the core are not only completely at home in early music but also seek connections with the music and arts of today. Trumpeter Eric Vloeimans is a contemporary jazz musician who does not allow himself to be constrained by any box. He played and plays with the Dutch jazz elite (Ernst Reijseger, Pierre Courbois) just
… as easily as with pop musicians (Kyteman) and everything in between. A collaboration between this industrious trumpet player and the baroque company produces, almost predictably, a beautiful album. With a lot of audible love, the couple touches each other and takes each other to great heights. The Baroque (by Susato, Gombert and Tallis) is sometimes almost stripped down until all that remains is a double bass and a subdued soloing Vloeimans. But it is precisely in his own composition, the gloomy funeral march Sans Parure, that Vloeimans sounds more baroque than ever. The same goes for an arrangement of The Beatles' Blackbird. It doesn't really matter where and how boundaries and laws are settled, what counts is the intense and atmospheric end result. (MR)more
