Peter Beets & the New Jazz Orchestra: Bach to the Blues

Jazz orchestra full of top talent presents a program around Johann Sebastian Bach.

Pianist Peter Beets leads the New Jazz Orchestra, an orchestra consisting of the best young professionals from the Netherlands. Beets has played with, among others, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, and has built a reputation from Tokyo to New York. With the orchestra, he previously delved into Chopin, French romanticism, and Spanish classical music.

On our stage, the orchestra presents Bach to the Blues, in which it follows the line from Johann Sebastian Bach to jazz. In addition to arrangements of Air, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, and the Goldberg Variations, new pieces in the spirit of Bach are heard, by Rob Horsting, Joris Bolhaar, Claudio Jr De Rosa, and orchestra members Suzan Veneman and Bart van Gorp. Journalist and musician Koen Schouten, as narrator, draws the connections between Bach and jazz, from the walking bass to improvisation.

“Jazz always contains Bach and blues. If one of the two is missing, then it is not real jazz.” (Peter Beets)