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Players <br />
Tineke Postma<br />
Transatlantic Blend<br />
Tineke Postma insists that she is first and<br />
foremost an improviser. “I want to be as<br />
creative as possible while having a dialogue<br />
with the other musicians,” says the 33-year-old<br />
Dutch saxophonist, speaking by phone from<br />
her home in Amsterdam. “The dialogue part is<br />
in the improvisation.”<br />
While working toward that goal, Postma<br />
has honed equally proficient chops on alto and<br />
soprano saxophones and developed considerable<br />
prowess as an arranger and composer. She<br />
is also an able bandleader and since 2005 has<br />
fronted a post-bop quartet that comprises some<br />
of Holland’s most respected jazz musicians:<br />
pianist Marc van Roon, bassist Frans van der<br />
Hoeven and drummer Martijn Vink. Postma’s<br />
fifth album, The Dawn Of Light (Challenge), is<br />
her first studio outing with the band, and demonstrates<br />
an audible chemistry that fuels their<br />
musical dialogue. It also evidences an ensemble<br />
of players on equal terms with each other.<br />
“I’m not looking to be the only soloist on<br />
stage, accompanied by the rest of the band,”<br />
says Postma. “It’s not so much about one person<br />
as it is about the collective music—that’s<br />
what matters. I just try to react as best I can to<br />
what I’m hearing onstage.”<br />
“She doesn’t play with an agenda,” said<br />
drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, a frequent<br />
collaborator whom Postma regards as her mentor.<br />
“Some people come in and you can hear<br />
what they’ve practiced, you can hear the arc to<br />
their solo before they’ve even finished it. But<br />
with Tineke it’s very in the moment, and the<br />
music really does influence where she goes.<br />
And that’s a very mature quality.”<br />
It’s also a quality that filters into Postma’s<br />
other musical endeavors, in particular her composing.<br />
Though she sometimes works in traditional<br />
song form on The Dawn Of Light, more<br />
often her constructions are less conventional<br />
and more organic, ranging from long, throughcomposed<br />
lines to the development of a single<br />
riff or melodic passage. “It’s a very instinctive<br />
kind of composing—it’s not very mathematical,”<br />
she explains. “What I do is record myself<br />
practicing, improvising on the piano, and just<br />
pick phrases and analyze what I’ve been doing<br />
and then build a song around that.”<br />
This method works because she sees her<br />
compositions’ primary purpose to be a framework<br />
for improvising. “They are the playground<br />
for my musicians and myself,” she says.<br />
“They’re really just sketches to allow us to be<br />
as free as we can, without sticking to it too<br />
much—every night playing the same way. And<br />
I find that in playing, I always try to focus on<br />
the melody, which for me is the important part<br />
of the song.”<br />
There is, however, more dimension to<br />
Postma’s work than her apparent single-mindedness<br />
about improvisation might suggest.<br />
Take, for example, her double instrumentation.<br />
Postma started as exclusively an alto player,<br />
but to take advantage of a greater sonic range<br />
she now divides her time equally between it<br />
and the soprano—playing the latter with soaring<br />
lyricism and the former with more gravel<br />
and bottom.<br />
She’s also a serious student of classical<br />
music. “I really only studied jazz in school,”<br />
she says, referring to both the Conservatorium<br />
van Amsterdam and Manhattan School of<br />
Music. “But now I find classical music very<br />
inspiring, all the beautiful harmonies and<br />
the melodies of composers like Debussy and<br />
Tchaikovsky.” The Dawn Of Light also features<br />
a robust, alto sax-led interpretation of a section<br />
from Floresta do Amazonas, a concert classical<br />
work by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-<br />
Lobos. (Another Villa-Lobos piece appears on<br />
her 2009 Etcetera Now release, The Traveller.)<br />
If she’s currently fascinated with the<br />
European tradition, however, Postma’s respect<br />
for and engagement with American musicians<br />
is inescapable. She describes Wayne Shorter<br />
and Herbie Hancock as her heroes. At the<br />
Manhattan School, her saxophone teachers<br />
were Dave Liebman and Dick Oatts. Postma<br />
has frequently collaborated with Carrington,<br />
and the saxophonist appeared on Carrington’s<br />
2011 release, The Mosaic Project (Concord).<br />
On The Dawn Of Light, Esperanza Spalding<br />
appears as a guest vocalist, and the Villa-Lobos<br />
piece is balanced with a cover of Thelonious<br />
Monk’s “Off Minor.”<br />
Improvisation may be her stated forte, but<br />
Postma’s artistic voice is ultimately a personal<br />
one on all fronts. —Michael J. West<br />
Joke Schot<br />
22 DOWNBEAT DECEMBER 2011