Description
Bassist Casper Hoedemaekers' debut album Heim is an intimate duo of double bass and piano, an inviting, after-hours meditation on the idea of home. In the five original compositions, there are themes of European identity, lockdown, displacement running through the five original compositions on this album. They show a tangle with tradition, drawing on jazz in its European and American vernacular.
The minimal instrumentation of the music allows the rich sonority of the double bass to sound through, revealing the delicate counterpoint of its melodic lines with the piano. Ranging from the sprawling waltz Tempelhof, the plaintive ballad Voor Joop to the Parker-esque stomp of Another Walk Around The Block, the five original tunes provide fertile ground for the two musicians' creative imagination.
Hoedemaekers also takes a more open approach in two free improvisations based on a poem by Jewish-Romanian poet Paul Celan. Playing with the images, sounds and meter in Celan's poetry, these bowed pieces show the versatility of the double bass as a lyrical instrument, a powerful and evocative voice in its own right.
Casper Hoedemaekers (bass) - Rob Brockway (piano)
All tracks composed by Casper Hoedemaekers
Recorded at Last Eight Studios, Hackney Wick, London in April 2022