Ab Baars Trio: powerfully appealing
The joyfully obstinate, yet powerfully appealing music that Ab Baars manages to lure out of his sax and clarinet is as colorful as it is astonishing. He surprises with the broad amalgam of sounds he produces. Baars is not trying to impress with his evidently superior technique; no, he expresses himself in a very natural sounding way. He does so in a trio, existing for over 15 years. And when musicians have played together that long, everything comes together intuitively, even when the music is improvised. With Wilbert de Joode (a regular guest at JPD) and Martin van Duynhoven, the trio consists of three internationally acclaimed musicians. Baars himself has played with dozens of hot shots of progressive jazz all over the world. Winning the prestigious Dutch Boy Edgar Prize, in 1989, surely wasn't an accident.