Time For Ballads: The Maene Sessions

Pianist Rob van Bavel has been one of the top players in Dutch jazz for many decades. In fact, there are few musicians who can compete with his knowledge of the tradition and craftsmanship. He is internationally renowned as an interpreter of bebop and he masters the finer points of this jazz style like no other.

On his new album he plays the Chris Maene Straight Strung grand piano, an instrument in which the strings are not stretched cross-stringed like on a Steinway. The effect is that the instrument sounds softer and warmer with more overtones. That character greatly benefits this production devoted to ballads.

Van Bavel has made a nice selection of standards and many of his own pieces. Ellington's well-known 'In a Sentimental Mood' gets a nice makeover, just like Styne and Kahn's 'I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry'. Van Bavel feels like a fish in water in the tradition and his interpretations radiate a profound love for authentic jazz.

Van Bavel also likes to play jazz arrangements of classical music, such as in the 'Elegie' composed by Rachmaninoff. The pianist himself contributes 'Your Nocturne', a composition in which you can hear Chopin nodding in agreement. It is also special that with 'De Tor Ahead' he pays tribute to one of the nicest jazz clubs in the Netherlands: a playful adaptation of the time-honored 'Detour Ahead'. Nowhere can the pianist be caught displaying sentimentality.

Like no other, Van Bavel knows how to strike the right nuance in his improvisations and to expose the core of a melody. Something that is perhaps most prominent in the two closing standards. For example, Johnny Mandel's 'The Shadow of Your Smile' is provided with a beautiful intro, from which the theme emerges from a box like a devil. The musical vision that Van Bavel puts down in the closing 'Body and Soul' shows great class. Everything is right: the tempo, the choice of notes and that soothing touch. He actually makes the Maene wing sing.

His eminent accompanists also deserve praise: double bassist Frans van Geest and drummer Marcel Serierse. Gently propelling, they always maneuver the music in the right direction and provide the slow songs with the necessary oxygen. 'Time for Ballads' is perhaps the most successful album made by the far too modest Van Bavel in practice: a statement with which he demonstrates that the jazz tradition is timeless, just like the music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.