“… to touch his audience with his exceptional integrity and his impressive skill on the instrument.”
You need guts to play really beautifully, and to create an ambience in which every note counts and every subtlety comes across. The Mike Mainieri/Marnix Busstra Quartet made the audience realize that one hardly ever gets to hear music played that way – for hours on end, in this particular case. Last Wednesday in the Bimhuis, three Dutch musicians and the 70-year old US citizen showed everything they had, in a most heartwarming way.
Vibraphonist Mike Mainieri is mainly known from his 1980s fusion group Steps Ahead, featuring musicians such as Michael Brecker. Nowadays, the term fusion often has a negative connotation, caused by the frequent display of musical muscles, meaningless virtuosity and outdated sounds that go back to the days that this type of music was really hot. But Mainieri, who started his career as a teenager, playing with high profile jazz musicians in the 1950s, doesn’t force his virtuosity upon his audience. He makes his demanding instrument sound completely natural. The metal bars of his vibraphone have been adjusted for a brighter sound, making the tuning go up as well – so the entire concert was played at a slightly higher pitch.
Both Busstra’s playing and his relaxed, accessible compositions felt like coming home. He’s a modest musician who gets to touch his audience with his exceptional integrity and his impressive skill on the instrument. The quartet played music that had no room for egos but plenty of space for anything else, in which the guitar and the vibes were the equal partners of the double bass of Eric van der Westen and the drums of Pieter Bast. Never a dull moment. On the contrary: the intense interaction was exciting, and the band displayed a perfect balance, even on the first show of this tour, promoting the quartet’s CD, Twelve Pieces.