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ninahanddennis.com
More than just being about me, this site is also to showcase some of the groups and people with whom I've been playing over the years.
Lately I've been performing regularly in Amsterdam's Badcuyp, with my boy Faroek Abdoelrahman. That's really his session that he organized for the Joe Henderson song, Jinrikisha that you hear above.
Zeedijk Serenade is one of my latest originals. It's named after the place here in Amsterdam where I played for a number of years. The club there is the Casablanca and it's the oldest jazz club in the Netherlands. But I don't play there anymore recently. . . . Too busy with studies and other things.
The recording isn't so great, it's my first try with our new digital studio, and I did it live after maybe twenty minutes practicing with the guys. So it's not even a great version. Nevertheless I still like the composition, better than my performance, so . . . . I'll record it again later this year, but let me know what you think . . . .
Oh I should also mention that just a short walk away from the Casablanca is where Chet Baker fell out of the hotel window. For me he is the patron jazz saint of Amsterdam. I've even played here with people who lived and played with the man. . . Small world.
Fat Boy Sneaking is a song from a funk band from waaaaaaay back in the late 90's. Diego, aka Paul Johnson from Cleveland put us all together and we made some nice shit. The band was called Thickness. Our bass player Mike Moran wrote most of this song, while I put my own keyboard parts onto his funky grooves.
Off Kilter is another Diego Thickness song from back in the day. Diego wrote nice tunes, with interesting melodies and we made all our parts over his initial idea. I'll update the story of the song another time.
But one cool thing is that the drummer who is buddhist priest of some sort, does a sanskrit prayer in the middle toward the end of the song. Unfortunately, I've taken this song off for the time being. With only six songs from Myspace, I've decided to rotate throughout the old and the new recordings.
Peace the Horace Silver classic has been added in place of Off Kilter for the time being as I rotate throughout various recordings. This song is live again, from the Hermann Wesselink muziekavond, which is when we teachers perform musical numbers and poetry for each other and for interested parents and students. This is one of Peter's favorite pieces to play, so he chose this as one of his songs for the night. One of my songs is the Zeedijk Serenade which you can also hear on this player.
San Francisco Dream is Diego's ode to the city that he met after Cleveland. It states his dreams and aspirations of being a reputable musician in San Francisco I believe. But helas, . . . . . . at least it's a great and moving song. I especially like Diego's guitar solo, and my 'horn' solo at the end.
Een kerstlied uit Coventry is A Coventry Carol to all of the non-Dutch speaking people. I got this arrangement from a beautiful book that one of my wife's friends gave to us as a wedding present. I directed the MusicalFACE choir who performed it after Hans Hollander translated it into Dutch for our, A Christmas Carol production. This recording is from our performance at Haarlem's Anton Pieck Parade.
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