Wessel Ilcken

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Wessel Johan "Wes" Ilcken (born December 1, 1923 in Hilversum ; † July 13, 1957 ) was a Dutch jazz drummer and band leader of the bop .

Live and act

After playing with Piet van Dijk's orchestra, Ilcken founded his own band in 1950 with the singer Rita Reys , whom he married in 1945. They met in 1943 when she was a singer in the Van Dijk Orchestra. His combo played in Amsterdam from 1950 to 1952 in the "Hollywood Club". In 1953 they went to Sweden, at that time one of the centers of modern jazz in Europe. There they played with the saxophonist Lars Gullin , the pianist Bengt Hallberg and many traveling US musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie , Herbie Mann , Tony Scott , Bob Cooper , Joe Carroll . Back in the Netherlands he became a central figure of modern jazz in the Netherlands, documented in a series of recordings "Jazz from Holland" (1955) and "Jazz behind the Dykes" (1955 to 1957), the first recordings of modern jazz in the Netherlands. Most recently he played regularly with Rita Reys at the Scheherezade nightclub in Amsterdam.

He died unexpectedly of a cerebral haemorrhage (a result of a waterskiing accident) at the age of only 34. The largest Dutch jazz prize, the Boy Edgar Prize , was named after him for many years as the “Wessel Ilcken Prize” (first awarded in 1963, renamed in 1980 after the then recently deceased big band leader Boy Edgar ).

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personal data
SURNAME Ilcken, Wessel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ilcken, Johan Wessel; Ilcken, Wes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch jazz drummer
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Hilversum
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1957