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Kees Hazevoet was an integral part of the emerging Amsterdam new jazz scene in the 1960s and 1970s. The fact that he left the music completely just as it was beginning to receive international attention has no doubt obscured his place among more familiar names.  But in fact he was part of the first wave of free players in Amsterdam, and as the scene solidified he worked with all the major figures there and with many well-known non-Dutch improvisors as well.

Hazevoet began performing jazz publicly in 1963. The Dutch appearance of Albert Ayler’s group with Sunny Murray a year later, during their extensive northern European sojourn, left a lasting impression on the budding pianist, as it did on many of his colleagues. In 1966, Hazevoet began playing piano in Willem Breuker’s important early orchestra, a variable ensemble which Hazevoet recalls sometimes had as many as 30 pieces. It was with this group that Hazevoet made his first recording, on Breuker’s debut, Contemporary Jazz From Holland (Relax, 1966, later reissued on a Wergo LP). In 1966, he also began an association with tenor saxophonist (and key organizer) Hans Dulfer, with whom he played and recorded intermittently until 1970. In 1967, young drummer Han Bennink joined the Breuker large group and also began working with an ensemble led by Hazevoet and Dulfer. Out of this, Hazevoet and Bennink would commence a longstanding musical partnership; in 1969 they played their first duets, and after a decade of collaboration they documented their highly personal duo music on Calling Down The Flevo Spirit (Snipe, 1978).

Starting in 1970, Hazevoet led a quartet with Kris Wanders a Dutch saxophonist, also a member of Peter Brötzmann’s early groups in the mid-60s and a rhythm section of Dutch bassist Arjen Gorter and South African drummer Louis Moholo. This group worked together regularly and early in its existence waxed the beautiful, virtually unknown LP Pleasure (Peace, 1970.  Hazevoet played extensively with Moholo, as well, in various groupings, including an “all-star” amalgamation that toured in 1975, with Mongezi Feza, Han’s brother Peter Bennink, Evan Parker, Maarten van Regteren Altena, and Rafael Donald Garrett.  Toward the end of the 1970s, Hazevoet’s main associates were German saxophonist Brötzmann (with whom Hazevoet had first played in 1967, in the For Adolphe Sax group with Sven-Ĺke Johansson and Peter Kowald) and his old pal Han Bennink.  He led a quintet at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 1978 with Bennink, Brötzmann, Moholo, and bassist Alan Silva. Two years earlier, at the then-young BIMhuis, Amsterdam’s headquarters for improvised music and free jazz, he convened Haazz & Company.

In December 1979, fed up with the music world, Hazevoet made his last public performances. In the 1980s, he travelled extensively in West Africa and began to pursue a career in the sciences, studying bioacoustics at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY and working at the Zoological Museum of the University of Amsterdam. As a scientist, Hazevoet is widely published and has written articles and books on his main field of expertise, ornithology, as well as mammalogy and theoretical and methodological topics in systematic biology. Between 1988 and 1998 Hazevoet conducted field studies in the Cape Verde Islands and biology study at the University of Amsterdam.   He received his PhD in biology in 1996, and since 1998 he has been Curator of Ornithology at the National Museum of Natural History in Lisbon, Portugal, where he now resides.

Unlawful Noise
   Haazz & Company
   Kees Hazevoet (piano, clarinet)
   Peter Bennink (saxophones, bagpipes)
   Peter Brötzmann (tenor saxophone, clarinets)
   Han Bennink (clarinets)
   Johnny Dyani (bass)
   Louis Moholo (drums)

When one listens to this reissue, one can only wonder at what might have been!  (If you are unfamiliar with Hazevolt's life, please read the story to the left.)  Culled from hours of live tape from 1976 performances and edited down in a straightforward way that left the seams showing, the enormously volatile orginal Unlawful Noise was issued in a small batch as the only release on KGB Records.   This Atavistic reissue is faithful to its origins in all respects and comes with our highest recommendation!  Do not miss this one.

2 tracks in 52:09 minutes

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