Jan Menu

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Jan Menu (born June 13, 1962 in Hulst- Kloosterzande, Netherlands ) is a Dutch jazz musician ( baritone , tenor , alto and soprano saxophone ), producer, arranger and composer .

Life

Menu comes from a rural district of Hulst in Zeeuws Vlaanderen , the coastal border region with Belgium. He completed his musical training from 1984 to 1990 at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam . At first he played alternately alto and tenor saxophone. Over time, the baritone saxophone became his main instrument. Together with guitarist Maarten van der Grinten and double bass player Jan Voogd, in 1987 he founded the “chamber jazz” trio Dig d'Diz . With this combo he won the Loosdrecht Jazz Concours in 1989 . The first two albums (1992 and 1997) received good reviews. Dig d'Diz played at the Bimhuis , at the North Sea Jazz Festival and at the Museé d'Art Moderne in Paris. The live recording of the third album Dig d'DiZ One Too , released in 2009, was made in the Robeco Jazz Café in Amsterdam .

As a member of Greetje Kauffeld's backing band , he toured Europe and the United States and contributed to three albums. Menu was part of Laura Fygi's band for over 18 years and was involved in three albums. During the live recording at Ronny Scott’s jazz club in London , the band played every night for a week. Menu was also the sideman of the Mingus Big Band European tour in 1994.

Since 1994 he has been running his own concert agency and jazz music production under the name Jan Menu Productions , which mainly focuses on his own projects and participations. In 1996 the saxophonist became a member of the New Concert Big Band under the direction of Henk Meutgeert . Its management has been in his hands for years since 1997, including the negotiation of the close connection between the big band and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw , which led to a change of name in 1999. Menu was a member of the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw for eleven years , which also resulted in three albums. In 2009 Menu founded his own independent label Dig Diz Music .

His first album under his own name called Mulligan Moods (2008) was dedicated to the compositions of the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan . It appeared in the Netherlands and Japan. The second album Dutch Songbook (2010), which was created together with the pianist Jasper Soffers , aimed to investigate whether there are songs in the Dutch song repertoire that would be suitable for future jazz standards based on the example of the Great American Songbook .

In 2013 Menu went on a theater tour through the Netherlands with Fay Claassen's project Remembering Chet Baker . In 2005 he worked on their double album Two Portraits of Chet Baker (2006). He also worked with Jesse van Ruller , Nico Bunink , Willem Breuker , Loek Dikker and Gary Smulyan . When Herman Brood (1999), Jeroen Zijlstra (2011) and Gerrie van der Klei , he also appeared (2012) as a sideman with on albums.

Since 2012, Menu has been playing together with Ties Mellema, Niels Bijl and Nils van Haften as The Four Baritones , an ensemble of four baritone saxophonists that was already 10 years old at the time. In October 2012 they organized the first edition of the Baritone Saxophone Festival in the Amsterdam village of Durgerdam . In 2013 and 2014 Menu hosted the Jazzin concert series at Restaurant Stedelijk in Amsterdam. From 2014 he will perform with the Gerry Mulligan Revisited program in a duo with the pianist Cor Bakker . Starting in April 2015, Pierre Courbois went on tour on the occasion of his 75th birthday with the PC Qwintett , to which Jan Menu is also a member. He had previously worked with him on his album Unsquare Roots in 2000 .

Discographic Notes

under his own name
with Greetje Kauffeld
  • 1989: Greetje Kauffeld meets Alan & Marilyn Bergman. On My Way To You (Munich Records BV)
  • 1992: European Windows (Riff)
  • 1994: The Real Thing (Riff)
with Dig d'Diz
  • 1992: One
  • 1997: Dig d'DiZ meets the Mondriaan String Quartet
  • 2009: Dig d'DiZ One Too (with live DVD)
with Laura Fygi
  • 2003: At Ronnie Scott's ( Verve )
  • 2003: Live at North Sea Jazz (DVD, Universal Classics & Jazz)
  • 2007: Rendez-Vous (Verve)
with Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw
  • 2003: 30 jaar Sesjun (with the Four Freshmen)
  • 2005: Tribute to Ray Charles
  • 2007: Riffs' n Rhythms
with Rembrandt Frerichs
  • 2007: Self Portrait (Plastik People)
  • 2009: Ordem e Progresso (Plastik People)

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d Biographical information on Jan Menu , jazzhelden.nl, accessed July 21, 2019 (Dutch)
  2. ↑ a b c Jan Menu Short biography and discography , accessed July 21, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Menu, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch jazz saxophonist, producer, arranger and composer
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Hulst -Kloosterzande, the Netherlands