Gideon Tazelaar

About the show

Gideon Tazelaar and Arnie Somogyi Quintet

For tonight’s presentation we welcome back after a long absence one of the Be-Bop Club’s co-founders, the great bassist Arnie Somogyi. Arnie started the club alongside Italian pianist Andrea Papini around 1988 as far as anyone can remember, originally in the now closed Crown and Anchor at the bottom of Jacobs Wells Rd.

Arnie visits as part of a short tour featuring special guest New York based saxophonist Gideon Tazelaar.

One of the rising stars of European jazz, tenor saxophonist Gideon Tazelaar grew up in the Netherlands, where he developed his musical skills by playing with saxophonist Benjamin Herman and drummer John Engels from a young age. A prodigious talent, he was admitted to the Bachelor’s degree programme at Amsterdam Conservatoire at the age of just 14. In 2017 he moved to New York City, where he studied at the Juilliard School of Music and played with Wynton Marsalis in a number of line-ups. Now a full-time resident of New York, where he is mentored by saxophone legend George Coleman, Tazelaar is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most exciting young tenor players on that scene, working as a sideman with artists as diverse as Dr Lonnie Smith, Eric Alexander and Dick Oatts as well as leading his own bands.