Pop Icon

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday January 28, 2000

JOHN SHAND

Jazz saxophonist Yuri Honing plays Abba's Waterloo to jazz audiences. "The art is in trying to make things simple,"he tells JOHN SHAND.

The Dutch tend to do things differently. In the wake of clogs, dykes and windmills they turned their attention to jazz, and, as the Yuri Honing Trio proves, they have been no less innovative and no less whimsical. Honing is a hell of a tenor saxophonist who has been working with bassist Tony Overwater and drummerJoost Lijbaart for nine years. Perhaps it comes from all the touring, but his telling metaphor was that they "read each other like maps".

He describes the recent Sequel CD as typical of what they do live,with its mix of pop tunes and original pieces which may show classical or Middle Eastern influences.

The integration of pop certainly sets them apart, with the previous Star Tracks album devoted to rebirthing such ditties as Abba's Waterloo and The Police's Walking on the Moon.

"It started while we were touring Canada," Honing recalls, "and we just got bored with the repertoire. So I started playing Waterloo and the strange thing was that we found a way to make it sound good, without being just funny."

Having dumped all the producer-added elements, they may then change the tempo of a song, but have tried to meet the challenge of not changing the chords.

"It's quite easy for jazz musicians to make things complicated. The art is in trying to make things simple, and I think the power of those songs is

really that most of them are quite simple, but very, very well written."

Honing maintains that the fact this material works in a jazz context is proof of his idea that jazz is not so much a style of music as a language; a language which is alive, relevant and evolving with the times.

He abhors the obsession of some players with recreating a past era of the music.

"I think that is not natural ... The danger is that people will think of jazz like classical music; like something that is over."

The Yuri Honing Quartet plays the Side On Cafe, Annandale, tonight and the Basement on Monday.