{"id":1706,"date":"2023-02-17T01:41:09","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T01:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.justsheetmusic.com\/blog\/?p=1706"},"modified":"2023-02-17T01:41:09","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T01:41:09","slug":"jazz-vocalist-heleen-van-den-hombergh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.justsheetmusic.com\/blog\/21th-century\/jazz-vocalist-heleen-van-den-hombergh\/","title":{"rendered":"Jazz Vocalist Heleen van den Hombergh"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"heleen-van-den-hombergh\"<\/a>

Heleen van den Hombergh<\/p><\/div>\n

Heleen van den Hombergh is a wonderfully talented Dutch jazz vocalist<\/a> who, alas, doesn’t have much of a following in the English-speaking world.<\/p>\n

Above I’ve linked you to a performance of “Orange Blossom Scent,” and of course I’ve also offered a literal minded bit of imagery.<\/p>\n

As a small symptom of Hombergh\u2019s relative neglect, though, note that she doesn\u2019t have an entry in the English language Wikipedia, a source that gives bits of bandwidth to such (in my humble opinion lesser) musical talents as Kirk Whalum, Steve Cobby, and Lydia Lunch.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, she is renowned in the lowlands and in discerning places far beyond where jazz is appreciated. On Tuesday, September 17, 2013, she sang at Jazzclub Notorious, in Buenos, Aires<\/a>, Argentina, with Manuel Frago on the piano, Pablo Motto on the bass, and German Boco drumming.<\/p>\n

The Turn of the Century<\/h3>\n

\"hombergh-heard-in-the-scene\"As she tells her story on her website,<\/a> her career took off when the already established pianist Bert van den Brink heard her sing in 2000. [Here\u2019s a link to some of van den Brink\u2019s<\/a> work.] He<\/i> has described this moment as \u201clove on first hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brink and Hombergh soon joined forces with one another and with Tony Overwater on bass, Joshua Samson on the drums. This was the quartet that did the CD Heard in the Scene<\/i> in 2002. A critic at the time called her a \u201cremarkable newcomer\u201d<\/a> and hailed Brink as her \u201cdiscoverer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bert-van-den-Brink\"

Bert van den Brink<\/p><\/div>\n

They covered songs by Gershwin (\u201cMy Man\u2019s Gone Now\u201d<\/a> and \u201cI loves you Porgy<\/a>\u201d), as well as by Rundgren and Stevie Wonder. They also did some of Hombergh\u2019s own compositions, such as \u201cJungle of Stone.\u201d<\/p>\n

I get mad at the sight of madness\/Just crossing the street.<\/i><\/p>\n

The lyrics of \u201cJungle of Stone<\/a>\u201d are straightforward. They\u2019re the common complaints of a dweller in a city who longs for escape and a return to the countryside. \"heleen-van-den-hombergh-rush-in-the-woods\"Yet the beat, Brink\u2019s mood-setting on the piano, and Hombergh\u2019s pure unaffected voice, together convey the message with an unusual directness and forcefulness probably not felt since Henri Rousseau pout down his paintbrush.<\/p>\n

That quartet performed at the North Sea Jazz festival, and at a variety of other venues both in the Netherlands and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Second Album<\/h3>\n

The second album of Homburgh, and her three instrumentalists, was Rush in the Woods<\/i><\/a> (2004). Hombergh, who trained in the sciences before she made music her vocation, here indulges in her passion for the rain forests of the globe. It isn\u2019t the jungles of stone so much as the actual jungles that are the objects of concern here.<\/p>\n

She sings in these tracts about the butterflies to be found there, (\u201cBeauty in Blue\u201d), the strangler fig (\u201cFatal Embrace\u201d) and the tropical canopy itself, \u201cTreasures.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a garden\/three hundred feet up high\/where a million eyes are watching\/the clouds and crowds go by.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"falling-tree\"That choice of subject matter, and indeed the underlying philosophy of the album, reminds me of the old riddle, \u201cIf a tree falls in an uninhabited forest, does it make a sound?\u201d My problem with that riddle has always been that it makes a false assumption: that the only ears, or the only ears that count in some Berkeleyan sense, are human <\/b>ears. When there is no human under a certain canopy, there may not be any sound, we like to think. How selfish!<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about \u201cFatal Embrace\u201d a bit. This is, as mentioned above, a song about the strangler fig, a vine-like tropical plant that begins life in the margins of a tree, somewhere perhaps in the midst of a trunk, and then grows in both directions, downward toward soil and up toward the canopy and unmediated sunlight. In time it may kill the host tree.<\/p>\n

\"columnar-tree\"The biosphere is full of growths that kill their hosts: cancer cells, viruses, and so forth. The difference with a strangler fig is that it isn\u2019t <\/i>committing suicide when it does so. It doesn\u2019t kill its host until it is strong enough to stand alone, so it becomes what is known as a \u201ccolumnar tree\u201d with a hollow center.<\/p>\n

The life of a strangler fig is a subject rife for philosophical meditation. It would seem to show that nature is always \u201cred in tooth and claw\u201d even when there are no literal teeth, claws, or red blood! Nature is always a struggle of life for survival, with a willingness to take the life of other organisms implicit in that struggle, even when the willingness is of a vegetative character.<\/p>\n

Hombergh makes it a \u2018battle of the sexes,\u2019 with the unfortunate nurturing original tree getting the feminine pronoun. It\u2019s his devilish nature that makes him kiss and seal her lips.<\/a> <\/i><\/p>\n

More Recently<\/h3>\n

Skipping forward several years we come to 2011, when Hombergh and a new set of collaborators produced the CD, Way Back Home. <\/i>By this time, her pianist <\/i>\u2013 or, rather, her keyboardist \u2013 was Jeroen Vierdag. Her guitarist was Karel Boehlee. Further, she was no longer the only vocalist in front of a mike. She had Kristina Fuchs along to do back-up vocals. Her new percussionist, Bart Fermie, also did backup vocals.<\/p>\n

\"heleen-van-den-hombergh-way-back-home\"Hombergh does have some admirers among Anglophones, thankfully, and one of these is clearly C. Michael Bailey, who has written a fine appreciation of her work in a recent issue of AllAboutJazz. <\/a><\/p>\n

Bailey knows what he likes, and writes of it instructively. He admires the growth between Rush <\/i>and Way Back<\/i>. It is the kind of change in perspective, he said, that comes about when \u201clife happens\u201d and when an artist is open to it.<\/p>\n

Several of the Tracks in Way Back<\/i> are more introspective than those in Hombergh\u2019s earlier work. The names of the tracks indicate as much: So That\u2019s What You\u2019re Worth<\/i>, for example, or Jealousy,<\/i> or Messenger Soul.<\/i><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s conclude this, then, by listening to her perform \u201cSo that\u2019s What You\u2019re Worth\u201d<\/p>\n