1964 Born in Hilversum - The Netherlands
1968 First Music Lessons ‘Dalcroze Music Philosophy’ from Tera de Marez Oyens
1970 Start listening to rehearsals and gigs from the New Orleans Wild Cats
1972 First Piano Lessons
1974 First seen Clarinet and Saxophone player Sammy Rimington
1976 First seen Trummy Young
1981 Start playing Double Bass
1982 Start playing with Adam Olivier’s Jazz Bands
1982 Start playing Trombone
1983 First recording with Golden River City Jazz Band from Belgium with
Colin Bowden
1983 Start study Music Teacher at the Conservatory of Hilversum
1984 Second recording, on Tuba, one number with the La Vida Jazz Band
1985 Winner of Philip Morris Award with my own band,
the Young New Orleans Band
1985 Perfomance on the Montreux Jazzfestival with the Young New Orleans Band
1986 First gig on trombone with Adam Olivier
1988 Graduate Music Teacher at the Conservatory of Hilversum
1988 Playing first trombone with the La Vida Jazz Band and Silver Leaf Brass Band
1988 Playing at the Army Music Band of Amersfoort during duty
1990 Playing at the North Sea Festival, Ascona Switzerland
1992 Playing in Norway Haugesund, Playing at the North Sea Festival
1993 I got married with Sylvia van Dijk
1993 Recordings with Milton Batiste with La Vida Jazz Band
1994-98 Start of Music Teacher in Lelystad at ROC Flevoland and lots of gigs
with La Vida and Silverleaf, start playing with Ponchartrain Jazz Band
1999 Birth of my daughter Jade Melody
1999 Start playing with Four Stream Jazz Band
2001 Start playing with The Friends of New Orleans
2001 Birth of my son Bruno Quint
2002 Start playing with my own Quartet: The Tulane Jazz Quartet
2003 I concluded a study of the Lewis/Ewell Quartet
2004 Start playing with Crescent City Jazzmen en Gravier Street Jazzmen
2006 Music Teacher at ROC Flevoland (from ’94) and playing with
several Jazz Bands
Like a good New Orleans Jazz tradition, I come from a musical family. My father Ad van Pelt was a trombone player from ’51 till ’88 and he was in Holland in his active period one of the leading trombonists in the New Orleans jazz style. His brother, my uncle Gert, plays classical piano and has two sons who are also into music. My brother Emile is a musicologist and plays piano in several Jazz Bands. From my mother’s side, my uncle Arie is a great tenorist who plays Bebop and Swing in style of the great saxophone players, like Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Hank Mobley, Dexter Gordon and so on. So in our family and especially at home there was plenty of music daily. All kinds of music, but mainly Classical and Jazz music.
I start with music lessons at the age of four. My first teacher was the famous Dutch composer Tera de Marez Oyens. In a class, she played the piano and taught us the beginnings of music. It was called the ‘Dalcroze Music Philosophy’. One of the things I can remember was how to walk or move on different rhythmical patterns. I strongly believe that these lessons has made a basic for my sense of rhythm and timing. At six, I have to go to piano lessons.
I did not like it for a reason that has never been cleared. I change at nine to the flute recorder and that was more like it. I regain my pleasure and went on to do some examinations in this instrument.
In this period of my life, my father was playing in a New Orleans style Jazz Band, the New Orleans Wild Cats, led by trumpeter Herman Vomberg. It was by far the best New Orleans Jazz Band at the time in Holland. And their play was based on the earliest formation of the Bunk Johnson Band. I certainly believe that I would never ever in my life hear a band who play such great collective jazz as the New Orleans Wild Cats. When I was six I went with my father and brother Emile to rehearsals en gigs. And also musicians came to our house in Hilversum to play that good old New Orleans music. I was right in the middle of it. That went on for years and years. Also in the beginning of the seventies and the mid seventies, Sammy Rimington in the start of his thirties was playing a lot in our neighbourhood because his management was founded there. My father sometimes played with Sammy as a quest in his quartet. My first conscious remembering of that was when I heard Sammy and my father played ‘Hindustan’. I nearly fell from the chair, so deeply impact had it on me. As a boy of ten years old I thought ‘this is what I want to play, this is serious business’!
But it was some six years later that my parents bought a double bass for me. My brother, Emile by then was also deeply into jazz playing on the piano in The Wild Cats and in the La Vida Jazz Band led by trumpeter Adam Olivier. The double bass was standing next to the piano in the living room, it came out of the blue, it was bought for me without deliberation. But I was very interested in learn how to play it. My father and brother were daily playing, so for me it was kind of easy to join, and that’s what happened. From my brother I learn to read chord patterns. And from my father I was learning melodies all the time. The first number I played on bass was ‘Moonlight Bay’. We played with our home trio for about five years, every day, and also every day at least one new tune! And we began to play weekly at a club in our neighbourhood called ‘The Koepel’. When Emile moved out, sometimes I played at home the piano instead of him, but we did not play that regular as we used to. The double bass for me was a shot in the rose, within two years I played for example with Norbert Susemihl, Thomas l’Etienne, Colin ‘Kid’ Dawson, Lillian Boutté, Colin Bowden and some of the best New Orleans players from Holland.
Through my brother Emile, I’ve got a chance to meet trumpeter/vocalist and organiser Adam Olivier. He leads the La Vida Jazz Band from ’73 and the Silver Leaf Brass band from ’76. In the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, the La Vida Jazz Band worked some 180 gigs in one year and played with the finest jazzmen who lived in New Orleans such as Louis Nelson, Alton Purnell etc. Also Adam organised tours for among others Dejan’s Brass Band with whom he had a very strong en warm relationship. Adam had in those days the best jazzmen from the country such as Drummer Onno de Bruyn, Banjo players Hemmo Kieft and Wouter Nouwens en the American trombone player Jim Leigh. From ’81 till ‘88 I play several instruments in the La Vida Jazz Band and the Silver Leaf Brass Band and. I got a chance to play and learn bass drum, sousaphone, double bass, piano in his bands and I even play a gig or two on the snare drum. Beside the double bass, I loved the trombone and I start to practise on my fathers horn. A simple Bundy 2B trombone. In ’86 Adam asked me to play trombone with the La Vida Jazz Band on a two days tour on the wonderful island of Schiermonnikoog in the northern part of Holland. And that was in fact the start of my switch from double bass to trombone.
It was remarkable because at that time I was leading on bass an own band ‘the Young New Orleans Band’ and that band was very successful with lots of young people in it like Frank Roberscheuten and Wouter Nouwens. But somewhere I felt, the trombone is the real thing for me. I needed a instrument where I could express myself more in a musical way. And from all the instruments I could play and mentioned earlier above, I choose the most difficult instrument and most certain the instrument which I had not controlling at that time, The Trombone! The trombone was and still is a hell of a challenge. I never felt that with any other of the six instruments which I could play in a band. In ’88 Jim Leigh left the band and went back to San Francisco. Adam asks me to join as first trombone player in his both bands. It was paradise! I still play nowadays in both bands in fact, in fifteen years the band has not change personnel and that’s very rare! I’ve learned a lot about the music in those days, listening to records and walking with my sousaphone next to the wonderful trombone player Jim Leigh. Jim had so much experience, he knew the numbers so well and he had seen and heard the best bands in the fifties in the Club Hangover like the Kid Ory band en the George Lewis Band. In the Silver Leaf Brass Band while I was playing the sousaphone I listened to his tone and timing. He could really moan on his horn at the right time, and that is nowadays seldom heard. Like my father, Jim Leigh also influenced my play. I still play his magnificent solo on ‘Blueberry Hill’. From Adam, of course I’ve learned a lot. He has taught me how to handle this music. Adam was and is a no nonsense man. There was no rehearsing, no keys mentioned, no numbers mentioned, no agreement, just pick up your (in my case any ) instrument play and listen. That’s the so called ‘Black Approach’ and that’s the only way to do this type of music!
New Orleans Jazz is a music of moments. Through this way of working it creates a more spontaneous and inventive manner of play and believe me there were some glorious moments. The black approach is the hardest way to play this music. I’ve known and I’ve played with hundreds of white musicians. None of them approach the music so black as Adam does. But for Adam it’s quite normal, after all New Orleans Jazz is black music. This is about my jazz experiences, but between ’83 and ’88 I studied music pedagogy on The Conservatory of Hilversum in which I graduated.
Lots of things changed during the nineties. I got married with Sylvia van Dijk in ’93 and became a professional music teacher. From ’91 till ’94, I hired a working place and build up my own company which involved mainly piano lessons. At the high point, I had forty pupils. Then from ’94 I moved on to teach music in Lelystad at the ROC Flevoland. Students are educated in working with all sorts of people from the age of 0 till 100 years. Nowadays, I still do this job with much pleasure! The La Vida Jazz Band and Silver Leaf Brass Band remained my main activity on trombone. We did two tours with the famous New Orleans Brass Band trumpeter Milton Batiste. But the absolute highlight in my private life was the birth of my daughter Jade in ’99.
2000 - now
Two years later a became once again a daddy. My wife gave birth to my son: Bruno. Like the birth of Jade, of course another absolute highlight.
From 2000 I began playing with several new bands which are New Orleans jazz related. Hugo Jungen from the Four Stream Jazz band phoned and asked me to join his band. The Four Stream wanted to change style from Dixieland to New Orleans Jazz and so I become their trombone player and musical advisor. I also began playing with the Friends of New Orleans. A group of the finest New Orleans musicians in the Netherlands led by Cees Hoogkamer.
I concluded my study of the Lewis/Ewell Quartet from ’66. It has become a reader of forty pages. That study was a necessary thing because at the same time I found The Tulane Jazz Quartet with Ronald Wildering, Jaap de Wit jr. and my brother Emile. With this quartet we play seldom heard tunes and keeping the New Orleans quartet style alive.
The newest bands are the Crescent City Jazzmen with my friends Jaap de Wit jr and Hans Mantel, and the Gravier Street Jazzmen led by the clarinet player Will van Gessel. Sometimes I also play with some young people whom are in their begin twenties. They all come from Enkhuizen, a very jazz minded place in the Netherlands. Harm Hillegers, Bram van Tongeren and Carmen Vos are very talented musicians who really want to play like Bunk Johnson and Sweet Emma Barrett. That is very unique, I believe! My goal is to go on playing this type of music, not only playing it, but also promoting the New Orleans Music and Classical/Traditional Jazz is very important to me. And Jaap de Wit jr. and I are making plans to start a Jazz educational clinic for young children to learn the Jazz music. This is music for us all and music for all occasions!
