Jimmy Haslip, Scott Kinsey, Hans Eijkenaar & Jeroen de Rijk 'Honoring Jaco Pastorius'.

 

This tribute to bass legend Jaco Pastorius is a direct consequence of the friendship between Jimmy Haslip and Jeroen de Rijk that started in 1996. That’s when they played the North Sea Jazz Festival together with Yellowjackets and The Metropole Orchestra, conducted by Vince Mendoza. Jimmy is one of the band’s founding fathers. From that moment they were involved in various music projects that include live playing and recording. The idea for this collaboration came from Red Light District Jazz Festival director Marcel Kaatee. Jeroen is one of the festival’s ambassadors. The 2019 edition had a focus on the bass. Jeroen asked Jimmy to appear, and long-time “partner in crime” Hans Eijkenaar, who had already played with Jimmy too. And Jimmy asked Scott to join in, who is well known from the band Tribal Tech. Where Jimmy spent many long hours and studied with Jaco, Scott is a protégé of Joe Zawinul, with whom he was close friends for many years while also assisting with production and synthesizer programming. The link from Jaco to Joe and therefore the music of Weather Report is very obvious, at least to anyone with a jazz fusion heart. In June 2019 we played five concerts in Holland, honored our heroes and enjoyed it tremendously, as did the fans attending these concerts. We look forward to another chance to get back into “the ring” again, sometime in the foreseeable future!