A Blessed Musical Day With Eric Harland & Co.

It’s a blessed musical day when a Beaver finds herself arrive in Amsterdam to hear about an Eric Harland, Dave Holland, Chris Potter and Lionel Loueke show starting in two hours; buy a randomly-seated ticket and turn up to the gig to discover she’s seated a few metres behind Eric Harland on drum kit – with the other three remarkably-talented jazz cats next to him on stage making awe-inspiring music together.

Eric Harland, Dave Holland, Chris Potter & Lionel Loueke live at Bimhuis, Amsterdam 2015

Each of those four artists have their own long career histories in jazz and world music. Just to name a few artists of many, double-bassist Dave Holland’s history includes work with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock; guitarist Lionel Loueke with Herbie Hancock; saxophonist Chris Potter with Pat Metheny; and drummer Eric Harland with a long and evolving list of the Who’s Who in the contemporary jazz world.

Playing together on stage at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis Theatre, they took us on a sound journey aboard the groove train, through funky town, down and dirty into blues land, across the seas to West Africa and through many diverse landscapes of jazz.  Every moment of that journey had my jaw dropping in awe and my mouth open wide with a joyful smile.

My ears stayed with all four players but given my vantage point so close to Eric Harland, I couldn’t keep my eyes off his masterful hands on the kit (especially after interviewing him recently then missing out on sold-out tickets to his Voyager shows at Melbourne International Jazz Festival).

Eric Harland live at Bimhuis, Amsterdam 2015

Two sets, one standing ovation, an encore and a second standing ovation later, I turned to the young jazz head next to me and said “Wow. That was amazing“. He shook his head at me and replied matter-of-factly “Of course it was. What else did you expect from those four?”.

And so went Beaver’s spontaneously blessed Wednesday in Amsterdam with Eric Harland, Dave Holland, Chris Potter and Lionel Loueke 🙂 .

Get a glimpse of the musical goodness with these snippets from the show…

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