Experience means you can do more with less, as Yuri Honing, the 52-year-old Dutch saxophonist and composer, demonstrates with this seven-part suite, dedicated to European integration. Honing has worked with two late great jazz pianists in Misha Mengelberg and Paul Bley, explored Schubert song cycles, taken inspiration from dancers and pop singers, from political history and visual art. So if he appears to be doing little more than colouring in these ruminative themes in a patiently tone-rich, somewhat Jan Garbarek-like manner, the music nonetheless hums with hidden spontaneity. Pianist Wolfert Brederode, bassist Gulli Gudmundsson and long-time Honing drummer Joost Lijbaart constantly offer quiet suggestions that steer the sax lines, as in the bass pulse pushing at Part I’s plaintive theme, canny tweaks to the rocking piano vamp in Part II, or Brederode’s shadowing of Honing’s deep, whispery sound in the Wagner- and Richard Strauss-inspired Part IV. A dead cert for admirers of Garbarek’s and Tord Gustavsen’s music, but the sources, vision and seriousness here are all Honing’s own.
