50 years and counting: Bimhuis Still Has Blast Off

There could be no better way to round off a glorious three days of music than with the Sun Ra Arkestra, as a sold out Bimhius made clear. The iconic Amsterdam venue celebrated its 50^thanniversary last month and the legendary space jazz travellers made for a fitting finale to a packed weekend programme that featured American vibraphone hero Joel Ross, maverick Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger, Philadelphian poet Moor Mother and Belgian-Dutch bass guitar duo Farida Amadou and Jasper Stadhouders. Audiences brought the noise on every occasion.

“We think 50 years is a great achievement running a club with this profile, avant-garde, experimental, free improvised music, which is niche,” says artistic director Frank Van Berkel, who has been in post since 2018 and who was excited to mark October with a feast of sounds by such as Martin Fondse, Tineke Postma and Ramon Valle & Vernon Chatlein, as well as several concerts that honoured Dutch pioneer Willem Breuker.

“This is mainly achieved by my predecessor Huub van Riel, who ran the club for 40 years, together with the local community, which he kept together and extended as well. Also it was the Amsterdam municipality who supported the club for 50 years.”

Van Berkel has a particular connection to the club because he knew it as a player himself in the mid 1980s, and was also a member of the BIM union for musicians, which founded Bimhuis back in 1974: “Now the celebration has ended I can say we succeeded in the goal to be there for the city, the audience, the musicians and scene. We also succeeded in presenting the past, the future and the now in program.”

Although a legendary fixture on the European and international touring circuit, Bimhuis debuted as a place for mostly Dutch musicians, before greater funding over time facilitated both special local projects and international collaborations. Originally housed in the centre of Amsterdam it relocated to a building next to the prestigious Muziekgebouw concert hall on the southern bank of the river IJ.

The new incarnation of the club has kept the much-loved amphitheatre design with wide rows of seats rising from a broad stage that allows room for manoeuuvre, as Sun Ra Arkestra showed by ending their performance with a joyous walk through the aisles that cemented their rapport with a quite ecstatic crowd.

But Van Berkel has a slew of great gigs in his memory banks: “JC Tans and the Rockets at the beginning of the 1980s….rocking, accessible and entertaining. Harry Miller Quintet featuring (South African bassist) Miller, Sean Bergin, Wolter Wierbos, Han Bennink, which was also very compelling and interesting new music for me. ICP Orchestra (with Ernst Reijseger, Tristan Honsiger and more), which was exciting, crazy stuff. Maarten Altena Quartet (Maartje ten Hoorn, Michael Moore, Ab Baars, Maarten Altena) at the end of the 1980s. Delicate, beautiful, small, intense. John Zorn with the Ornette Coleman program (Spy vs. Spy) in the 1990s, which was wild. And a real classic was Tricentric by Anthony Braxton, DOEK festival in 2016, an amazing project with three conductors on the Bimhuis stage conducting one big ensemble of three divisions of Dutch and New York-based musicians.”

While all of the above clearly reflect the club’s status as a temple of the avant-garde Bimhuis has never been exclusively tied to that school, or rather it has programmed artists who show its connection to others. As you walk into the bar-restaurant of the club, where large windows offer a stunning waterside view, there is a selection of press cuttings on the wall, with one of the most eye-catching headlines being   

‘Terug naar de bop’, which translates from Dutch into English as ’back to bop’. It was a review of an Archie Shepp gig. If he never denied his love of Charlie Parker then he may have flown to the heavens in delight when Sun Ra Arkestra cheekily quoted Bird’s ‘My Little Suede Shoes.’   

As with any modern-day venue Bimhuis is constantly taking the initiative to secure and expand audiences all the while providing opportunities for artists. The run of excellent live albums on its own label under the umbrella Reflex, featuring the likes of Amsterdam-based Scottish trumpeter Alistair Payne, American poet Tongo Eisen-Martin and Turkish cellist-vocalist Sanem Kalfa among others, presents an intriguing view of emerging talent with a broad creative outlook.

“It is a follow up on the famous BIMHUIS carte blanche series. We wanted something less open-ended,” Van Berkel explains. “The Reflex series gives the local musicians the chance for development within our profile (avant-garde, experimental, adventurous music and connecting with international (European) scenes. Gender balance and diversity is an important criterion for the musicians we choose.

“The idea is to give musicians an ability to reflect on the world and its society. This originated in the pandemic. We do three to four editions per year. And we also have a yearly composition assignment, which is more directed to a complete composition from a composing bandleader.”