Summer Jazz Cycle Tour 2014 | Groningen, The Netherlands

Written by | Concert Reviews, Festivals, News

Text and Photos by: Eddy Westveer

The 28th edition of the “Summer Jazz Cycle Tour” looks like another successful edition. Hundreds of cyclists found the path through the Reitdiep Valley, north-west of the city Groningen, to the 26 concerts held mostly in old churches, barnes and the festival tent in Garnwerd.

Traditionally the tour that takes place on the last Saturday of August and is preceded by a prologue on Friday in the city of Groningen. This year the English vocalist, Maggie Nicols opened the festival along with the Xalam Trio from Brooklyn with unpolished grooves from the Middle-East, Africa and India.

The “Jazz Cycle Tour” on the Saturday is all about making choices. Although there are four routes mapped out, officially there are five starting points. This allows you to be able to pick your own start and end point. There is of course the possibility the some of the smaller venues are full, and there is a “full is full” policy. In this case you might want to wait for the second set or continue to the next location. All concerts are split in 2 sets with a 30 minute interval. So far the logistics.

The program offers the jazz cyclist a rich variety of the latest trends in jazz and improvised music. A mix of jazz and world Music, (Horizon Trio) a power trio with guitar, sousaphone and drums (Goudsmit/Bakker/Jäger), a duo chromatically and diatonic accordion (Florizoone/Laloy), the serene music of Susanne Abbuehl and Wolfert Brederode, the Batman jazz of Francesco Cusa with the Assassins or Gianluigi Trovesi and Marco Remondini mix jazz with traditional and classical music.

The “Summer Jazz Cycle Tour” is an adventure for the modern jazz cyclist, and if you appreciate the beautiful vistas of the green landscape and don’t care about (the possibility of) a little rain shower this is real quality time!

You can listen to some recordings made by the Dutch VPRO Radio network here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last modified: July 15, 2018