Ineke Vandoorn 2024 Interview
This is the transcript of my interview with the Dutch jazz singer Ineke Vandoorn. The podcast and video are linked here with the show notes, including the links to the album “Dancing on Water” with Jasper van ‘t Hof and Ineke’s website:
Ineke Vandoorn (00:00):
We spent a whole afternoon with Betty Carter singing, improvising, talking about her career, asking millions of questions about how she did it. She was such a special, one of a kind, independent, strong character, very inspirational, really, that was like life-changing.
Leah Roseman (00:24):
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music, the special catch up episode with the Dutch singer, Ineke Vandoorn focuses on her album with Jasper van 't Hof "Dancing on Water". You'll also get to hear of Ineke's inspirational experience learning from Betty Carter. You'll find the link to "Dancing on Water" and Ineke's website in the show notes for this podcast, along with the link for my in-depth and wide ranging interview from early 2023, during which she also performed live for this podcast. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms. And I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com. The podcast theme music was commissioned from composer Nick Kold, and you can use the timestamps to navigate the episode. Before we jump into our conversation, I wanted to let you know that you can support this independent podcast for a beautiful collection of merch with a very cool, unique, and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly. You'll find that link in the description of the episode along with my original interview with Ineke and all the links. Now to our conversation.
(01:47):
Hi, Ineke. It's so great to see you again.
Ineke Vandoorn (01:49):
Yes, thank you for having me back. It's lovely.
Leah Roseman (01:54):
I'm so happy to have this special episode to celebrate your new album, which we actually spoke about when we recorded the first episode.
Ineke Vandoorn (02:02):
Yeah, this has been, well, the project has been, as you said, it had a long run before it was finished, and so yeah, I can imagine that I was in the middle of it maybe when we spoke for the first time.
Leah Roseman (02:17):
Yeah, so Jasper van 't Hof, a very original keyboard player because the way he does things, I would say.
Ineke Vandoorn (02:27):
Yeah. I think what I like about his playing is he can be very intimate and very wild, but you will always know after, I dunno, 10 seconds, oh, this must be Jasper van 't Hof, because his style is so personal, he has really a style of his own.
Leah Roseman (02:49):
It's a very special collaboration, and I'm a big fan of your improvisation as well as your songwriting, and they both shine so beautifully. Very interesting progression of tracks. I'd like to talk to quite a few and get people a taste, and I've just felt like every single track was a journey. Its own journey. It just really takes the listener along and bears many repeated listenings.
Ineke Vandoorn (03:13):
Wow. Thank you so much. Yeah, wonderful.
Leah Roseman (03:17):
It's interesting that you decided to start off with a Paul Simon song, Quiet.
Ineke Vandoorn (03:23):
Well, when we started to work together, I thought, let's see, what is Jasper's repertoire? And Jasper is really at his best when he's playing his own repertoire, so we focused on that. He came with, he proposed some material and I proposed material from his repertoire. And at some point, I don't know exactly, I can't even remember where I came across that song, but I came across the song Quiet from Paul Simon, and I loved the lyrics so much. It really was like, wow. And it has to do with the fact that I started this project because I turned 60. Well, that's already a while ago then now. But Paul Simon is singing, the lyrics are about getting older, and he's reflecting on the moment that he might maybe not be singing anymore, stopping his career. And he says some very interesting things, some very sharp things about the music business as well. And so yeah, those lyrics are wonderful. And basically, we don't play the chords or nothing. So Jasper is playing a drone. There's a drone, one long tone. I start to sing the lyrics. I sort of sing the melody, but it's completely improvised. It's also a one take we did it live.
Leah Roseman (04:59):
Okay. You're about to hear a clip from Quiet (music)
(05:59):
So some of this album you recorded as a concert and some of it you went to the studio?
Ineke Vandoorn (06:05):
Yes. We started by playing two short concerts. It was in the middle of Covid time, and we had a possibilities to do special small concerts for, there were maybe 10 people. So these were set up special occasions where just to give musicians the possibility to play and for the audience to hear a little bit of live. So we started to do two concerts in a beautiful, really old studio in the Netherlands, I think it might be even the oldest radio studio in the Netherlands. And later on we did a regular studio recording there without audience, same place, same grand piano
Leah Roseman (06:58):
And Jasper often, well, maybe not often, sometimes when he plays his one hand on a piano and one on a synthesizer, right?
Ineke Vandoorn (07:08):
I think that is one of his specialties. He has really, I think I love his sound. He has very particular sounds that he use on his synthesizer, and yeah, he's a little bit of a wizard. He has all those keyboards around him, and then, yeah. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (07:28):
Your pianist, yourself, did you try out any of his setup for fun?
Ineke Vandoorn (07:34):
No, no, no, no. That's a little bit beyond what I'm doing at the piano. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (07:40):
In your, I would say, inspirations that you've listed in the show notes for the album, you listed Flora Purim, who we talked about last time, and also Joni Mitchell and Betty Carter, and I believe you have a story about meeting Betty Carter.
Ineke Vandoorn (07:56):
Yes. When I was in school, it was halfway, the eighties, end of eighties, and this was the time that there weren't yet CDs. And it was still hard, especially for older records. You couldn't just go to any shop and say, okay, let's give me this record. And I had a new teacher and she came up to me and she says, did you ever hear of Betty Carter? And she gave me a cassette. She made a cassette for me, and it was so free and so full of improvisation, and I hadn't heard that kind of singing at all. And I was completely hooked on it. And then year or two years later, I read somewhere that she had a concert in Belgium. So, well, I went to Belgium to that concert, and then in the intermission she just walked to the bar and I was sitting there.
(08:54):
So I started to talk to her with two other, also students that also were there. And long story short, we persuaded her to teach us the next day because she had another concert in Belgium. So she was staying in the same hotel for two or three nights, and she agreed. So the next afternoon we organized a pianist and a club and everything, and we spent a whole afternoon with Betty Carter singing, improvising, talking about her career, asking millions of questions about how she did it. And she was such a special, one of a kind, independent, strong character, very inspirational, really. That was life changing.
Leah Roseman (09:43):
I know it was a while ago, but do you remember any specifics from that afternoon?
Ineke Vandoorn (09:47):
Yeah, actually part of it I recorded on the cassette, and what I really recall is her, so she was playing with a lot of young musicians. And so we were asking her, so why are you playing with musicians that are so young? And then she would say, I want to be free. Maybe one day I do this song as a ballad, and maybe tomorrow I will do it uptempo. And if you play with older musicians, they're not into this kind of free approach. They want to be secure, et cetera, et cetera. And she also talked about her sound and about, well, as a singer, when you improvise, you are often encouraged to practice the same kind of stuff as saxophonist sax players are doing, or horn players, and to be as good and to have the same sound and all that. And she would just say, I'm not the saxophone player. I'm a singer. I do my own stuff. I have my own sound. I go my own way. That was really, yeah, these things are, I think, very important to hear when you're so young and finding your own way and not yet having a career.
Leah Roseman (11:12):
Yeah. You must have carried that advice with you. Well, there's a couple of these tracks where there's incredible vocal improv of yours. And since these are longer tracks, I think we'll mostly be playing shorter clips for people to give them a taste. So on, Marsch Fur, can't pronounce it, Oelze how do you say it?
Ineke Vandoorn (11:30):
That's a German title. Marsch Fur Oelze. So basically a march. Yeah. This is a piece written by Hübner, it's drummer, I think it was known in, I didn't know him. He's thinking maybe, I think he was very known maybe in Germany in the sixties or seventies. So Jasper proposed a song, and I immediately had also this, I could understand why Jasper would like to try this out. And he also said, oh, let's write lyrics to it. And because it's so slow and so majestic, it gives the whole sense of room of, I feel the song as almost like a cathedral, like a big space and slow majestic, I dunno. So I was very inspired by the chords and the pace, and I came up with also lyrics that are connected with a really wide open space, wide open, sound, wide open landscape. It could be a landscape from Saskatoon, you know what I mean, from the middle of Canada, something like that. A little bit rough. And I wrote about that.
Leah Roseman (13:01):
You're about to hear a clip from March Fur Oelze (music)
(13:03):
And actually the last song on this, Yayapriya is a Carnatic raga.
Ineke Vandoorn (14:06):
Yeah. The song has been played quite regularly by Charlie Mariano, who was a very well-known saxophone player. And Jasper worked a lot with him. And Charlie Mariano was playing a lot with people from India, maybe he even live there. And I also have been studying the Indian tabla sounds. They have this way of learning the tabla, and they use words for every sound on the tabla. And it sounds like (music) it's, I love that. So I was into that immediately, and we tried to make it our own, because I don't feel comfortable with presenting a song like that as an Indian pretending that I would do it the way that an Indian musician would do that. And so we really take our liberties in that, but we're still trying to stay close to the atmosphere from the beginning, from the raga.
Leah Roseman (15:21):
Next is a clip from Yayapriya(music).
(16:25):
Hi. Just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. I wanted to let you know that I have a new way you can support this independent podcast through a beautiful collection of merch with a very cool, unique, and expressive design from artists Steffi Kelly. You'll find that link in the description of the episode. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leahroseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peeks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing. You'll find that link in the show notes along with the merch store. I'm an independent podcaster, and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode.
(17:18):
And in terms of Jasper's, sometimes his bursts of energy with his improvisation, I thought for a Quiet American, it might be interesting for people to hear a little bit of the beginning, this Latin feel, sad ballad. And then later on, he has a bit of wonder that happens.
Ineke Vandoorn (17:38):
I think Jasper is quite strong also in playing ballads, because even though he might have some kind of a burst of energy, he really stays close, I think, to the original concept of the piece. He sort of knows intuitively like, okay, how far he wants to go, and then comes back to the form. And whereas, well, I really chose to stay very close to the intimate atmosphere of the beginning. And I think that's important because I'm also singing the lyrics, and I think what I improvise is sort of an extension. I feel an extension of the melody. And for me, it would feel not very natural then to burst out in some very expressive, free vocals in connection with what I've done before, what I do at the beginning of the song.
Leah Roseman (18:39):
You're about to hear two clips from a Quiet American, the very beginning, and then later in this piece (music)
(21:04):
Were there challenges for you in writing lyrics to some of these songs for this album?
Ineke Vandoorn (21:10):
Yeah, definitely. We are doing a song, which is called The Way She Looks, and it's one of the pieces that I really, really wanted to do with him because I loved the whole atmosphere, the melody, everything. I love everything about that. And Jasper said immediately, yeah, let's do it. And you have to write lyrics to that one. And I was so surprised because the melody and the piano compliment are completely independent from each other, and they are weaving in a very intricate way. So I was like, I couldn't believe that that would work. But I thought, well, I'll pick up the challenge. I'll just try. And when it doesn't work well, we just leave them out again. And it was an effort, and it's really an effort to sing them properly, I think. But I'm very happy with the result, and I'm also happy with it because when we perform, I feel actually that the audience is touched by the music in the way that I was touched when I heard the song for the first time. And in that way, I'm feel quite secure that they are not thinking about, oh, this is hard. You know what I mean? So it's not about that, so that I can just focus on the quality of the music without making the song sound too complicated or whatever, because it is complicated, but, you know.
Leah Roseman (22:56):
This is an excerpt from The Way She Looks (music)
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Living her name, proud. This can be with me day and night, changing my life, just the way she looks at me in her restless mind, birds of many feathers singing along the secret songs. She'd never dare to sing out loud for me, though, unrevealed, unarmed, still afraid, seizing the day, brave as can be with me day and night, changing my life, just the way she looks at me, standing still out, spread arms like a tree, feeding the birds, making them fly beyond each and every of her secret stories, make her let go of things she cannot face, walking side by side, day by day, cherishing the way she looks at me.
Leah Roseman (24:30):
So actually, the name of the album is Dancing on Water, but you have a song Dance on the Water.
Ineke Vandoorn (24:36):
Yes. That the title of the song would've been the title of the album. Yeah. I think when you say Dancing on the Water, I don't really like the word, the Dancing on the Water. It's like, to me, it sounds very specific on that water, but if you say Dancing on Water, to me, it gives much more feeling of, okay, you try to do something that is nearly impossible and tricky and it doesn't challenge. So that's why I choose for that title.
Leah Roseman (25:07):
Yeah, the beginning of this particularly, it's so joyful and uptempo and yeah, it's just a really beautiful contrast with some of the other,
Ineke Vandoorn (25:18):
Yeah, it's very fresh. Yeah, I like too. It's really fun to play, and we're just making fun together.
Leah Roseman (25:24):
Okay. This is the complete track of Dance on Water.(music)
(25:30):
Well, it's been great to celebrate this album with you. Is there anything we didn't talk about that you want to mention?
Ineke Vandoorn (31:33):
Yeah, what I would like to add maybe is the actually reason that I asked Jasper is that he is really the most unlikely pianist to ask as a singer, to do a duo recording with it. So I'm actually quite proud that we tried it and we were both open for the fact that it might not work because I didn't want to turn him or to invite him or to force him into holding himself back to step in a certain kind of role that would not fit him at all. And the same thing for me. I'm not Jasper van 't Hof. I don't do things like the way he does it. So it was really a Dance on Water. Is this actually possible? And my colleagues that I told, okay, I'm working with at a duo, they couldn't believe it. They would just say, that is just impossible to do that with him. So I'm really glad that I did it, and I'm very glad that it turned out this way, and it encouraged me that to believe in this intuition of mine, like, okay, there's two possibilities. Either it is really good or it will collapse completely, and we'll just give in and say, okay, no, that's not for us.
Leah Roseman (33:01):
Yeah. Well, it's important to have this kind of bravery with creativity, right?
Ineke Vandoorn (33:09):
Yeah. Yeah. It was good to have this experience.
Leah Roseman (33:15):
Well, thanks so much.
Ineke Vandoorn (33:18):
Thank you too. Wonderful talking with you again.
Leah Roseman (33:22):
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Pleased to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
