Folia, february 1997

Conductor Armando Cairo
'At some time I also started in the Crea Big Band, and learned to read notes there. I conduct the big band for some ten years now. I compare big band seasons with vintage years: this year is an exceptionally good year. The band is lively and swings, and in my opinion that is the most important with jazz music. The audience also reacts accordingly; the band knows how to touch the emotions'.

Cairo plays the saxophone and the critics were praising the recently released album Redheaded Sirens (Armando Cairo Quartet).

Cairo also is a painter. 'This combination is ideal. Painting is a lonely business. It's your own thing and you keep on working on a painting until it is exactly how you want it to be. Music is with and for other people. You play your solo during a performance and after that you can't change it anymore'.

Trumpeter Saskia Laroo
(Accompanied a.o. Hans Dulfer, Rosa King and her own band 'The Laroo Colour').

'It's great to play with the big band. As a guest-soloist you only play solos, not the written parts and I like playing solos the best. In a solo I can let myself go; most of my solos are based on numbers I know well, and I play them by instinct.

In jazz it's not what you play, it is the way you play it. There is not really something like a wrong note. With a certain interpretation or phrasing you can even make a wrong note sound interesting. It's important to have your own style. At the start you are aware of that and learn and listen to music that you like. At a certain point in time you notice that, even when you are playing interpretations, your own sound is obvious.

When I perform, the atmosphere is important, not the fact that I'm playing with amateurs or professionals. When the atmosphere is right, I sometimes play in a way I didn't even know I had in me."

Rainer Peter (1st trombonist)
'Especially in jazz it is important to create your own style. In your solos you have the room to tell your own story, which is not so in classical music.'

Marius Abeling (4th trumpeter)
"It's fun when people have developed their own way of playing. It's is the variation that makes the music interesting."

Clarence Becton (drummer, played a.o. with pianist Thelonious Monk). 'Jazz is music for personal experience. If you haven't got a personal message then you could as well play anything."

Bas Luttik (pianist)
'In a big band it's not so important to have an own style; it's more about the whole than the individual.'

Eric Barkman (bassist)
'In a big band it's not about how well you play, it's about how you can make music with others.'