DESCRIPTION:
Side one:
1. About blues - 00:00
2. About Dorian - 12:30
Side two:
1. Anticipation - 20:52
2. Autumn Leaves - 31:45

FRANS VAN BERGEN was born in 1929. He started playing the violin at the age of seven and received a formal classical violin-education. In 1947 he switched to Jazz, and he always tried to give his handling of the violin an extra suggestion of a wind-instrument. This inspired jazz-musician who knows how to kindle the flame of enthusiasm with his side-men and audiences, has been a very successful performer of the jazz-violin in Holland and other Western-European countries ever since, leading his own combo mainly for broadcasting programmes.

PAUL RUYS, gifted and one of Hollands' swingiest pianists, was born in 1928. He is an ideal improviser in a combo and a marvelous link between the rhythm-section and the soloing instrument or singer in any tempo or any mood. Paul has played with many outstanding jazz-musicians and gained wide knowledge of his instrument and the way of jazz-playing during the many years he has worked as a professional musician.

AREND NIJENHUIS, born in 1943, will always be mentioned by Dutch jazz-fans as one of the very best bass-players around. Like Paul Ruys, Arend is not only an excellent rhythm-man, but also a brilliant soloist with great technical skill and a strong feeling for superb jazz-playing. It is a thrilling experience to turn up the volume of your stereo-set when Arend's lean fingers jump over the strings in solo!

MARTIN VAN DUYNHOVEN, important exponent of the new jazz-generation, was born in 1942. His fine, flexible drumming supplies a wonderful swing and is full of rich rhythmic ideas in solo.

One of the most interesting points in Jazz is that the accent is put so strongly on the art of improvisation: improvising on a theme, a thought, a musical root from which the flower of individual improvisation blossoms. Of course "improvisation" is the very essence of music-making - the entire Concerto-idea in classical music stems from instrumentalists who could improvise, and when classical composers from the 18th and 19th centuries wrote their often highly individual music, they improvised, on paper, on their own thematic material.
Yet Jazz is different. Here we have a music, developed from Afro-American blues-songs, from ragtimes and from swinging marches, that met in long end with highly developed Western art-music. It has the tendency, however, to become more fascinating when the jazz-musician 'pur sang' gives it his own special treatment of personal expression. For the history of jazz was made by the individual soloists mainly, the "angry young men of music" of great musical potentials who could blow the blues and swing at the drop of a hat. From Buddy Bolden to Miles Davis, from Johnny Hodges to John Coltrane, improvisation was always a main-point in the various jazz-styles, various, because each musician of importance put his individual stamp on the music.
This LP-recording was made with two thoughts in mind: first, leader FRANS VAN BERGEN wanted to create a sound-picture of what he calls "atmosphere". Secondly, the four musicians wanted to improvise musically like a good conversation will go: no one knows what the others are going to say about the subject, but they all will reach their goal through mutual understanding.
So "FOUR IN CONVERSATION" was taking shape in the small Amsterdam studio during the night of 20th April 1966, a historical jazz-date indeed! There is "About Blues", as the title suggests a bluesy atmosphere, where the instruments come in one by one and find eachother in a tremendous and very positive climax. Then "About Dorian", another van Bergen original, with a theme in the dorian scale, that nice gamut in between major and minor moods. After this exciting experience, based on sheer improvisation, there is another free piece that will excite jazz-lovers even more: "Anticipation". And to show how versatile these great musicians are, they give their jazzy and straight-swinging rendition of the famous ballad "Autumn Leaves".

I do not own the copyright. This is for non-commercial purpose only.