Bass on Top a column by Arjen Gorter, with and without Willem Breuker The brotherhood of foundational European avant garde bassists gets smaller with each passing year. And among those still living, some are either inactive for various reasons or working in other fields, musical or otherwise. So, the subset of ones still going is a small but precious list. Among them is the Netherlands’ Arjen Gorter. Ask even a relatively informed listener of European avant garde jazz about him and almost invariably the first association will be Willem Breuker, and more specifically his Kollektief. Gorter did anchor that group for the entirety of its existence (1975-2010, with a retrospective farewell tour coming after Breuker’s death) alongside drummer Rob Verdurmen, allowing Breuker and a rotating cast of string and horn players (though trombonist Bernard Hunnekink was another stalwart) to navigate complex and subversive music, confident that a strong foundation would always support them. But like Jimmy Cobb always being referenced first and sometimes only as the last living participant of Kind of Blue after Miles Davis died in 1991, Gorter’s career, still ongoing, is hardly exclusive to his work with Breuker. Gorter was born in Amsterdam on January 2nd, 1948 and he has resided in the Dutch capital his whole life. His road to the bass was a circuitous one. As he wrote in an email, “I liked the accordion when I was very young. It was common in the Amsterdam streets of the ‘50s, but the tunes that my teacher made me play were too silly, so that did not last. My dad imported musical instruments. He brought a slightly damaged ukulele home and so at around 11 I tried playing along with the nightly jazz broadcasts on French and Belgian radio. The father of a friend had a small jazz collection and I loved the Art Blakey Blue Note 45s, the Monk LP and the other stuff he had. So that ukulele was replaced by a guitar. I started jamming in our attic with friends and others and at some point someone brought a double bass upstairs and left it there for six months. I had fun playing it and managed to buy it from him once he showed up again.” During high school Gorter played guitar in a band for school dances, repertoire ranging from period rock tunes to jazz compositions. He began college in 1966, aiming to study political science and sociology, the same year he first worked professionally with Breuker, having heard the older reed player’s bands around town and once playing with him at a jam session. Gorter was invited to join a new Breuker group, which performed at the Loosdrecht Jazz Competition as a sextet, then expanded to almost two-dozen musicians for the final stage. This group would make Litany for the 14th of June 1966 (Relax) in late October 1966, Gorter’s recording debut alongside two other bassists, the much older Dick van der Capellen and Victor Kaihatu. Gorter would balance university and performing for a few years. During this time, he would work with Germany’s Gunter Hampel, appearing on his April 1968 Wergo date Gunter Hampel Group + Jeanne Lee and participating in the November 1968 Total Music Meeting in Berlin, where photo evidence has him in a bizarre encounter with Hampel, John McLaughlin, Sonny Sharrock, Pharoah Sanders, Roy Ayers, Laurie Allan, and Roel Kroes. 1969 saw even more activity: more Hampel work, including the album The 8th of July 1969 (inaugurating his Birth imprint); playing on German trumpeter Manfred Schoof’s FMP release European Echoes and being part of the Peter Brötzmann Oktett at the International Holy Hill Jazz Meeting (alongside Buschi Niebergall and Peter Kowald; Richard Williams’ review of European Echoes in the March 14th, 1970 issue of Melody Maker saying, “It’s an astonishingly powerful performance, with particularly superb work by Dudek, Bailey and the three basses, who play a really fantastic trio section.”). Gorter is also heard on the Live at The Bohemia Jazzclub recording by Hans Dulfer’s Soulbrass Inc., as well as a track with Breuker and Han and Peter Bennink heard on the Instant Composers Pool cheese box. As Gorter recalled, “I managed to juggle both activities until the end of 1969, but I was more on the road than in Amsterdam and had to make a choice and I chose the activity that gave me way more satisfaction.” During the first half of the ‘70s, Gorter and Breuker did not work together often, at least as can be gleaned from available recordings: Hampel’s People Symphony (Birth, 1970) and part of his group that participated in German avant garde composer Hans Werner Henze’s Der Langwierige Weg In Die Wohnung Der Natascha Ungeheuer; and an unofficial Amsterdam recording from 1973 under Breuker’s leadership and a live date from Leo Cuypers in 1974, both with groups prefiguring the Kollektief (Cuypers was its first pianist). Otherwise Gorter was busy – again, at least on record – with Hans Dulfer, Kees Hazevoet, Theo Loevendie, Alexander Von Schlippenbach, and the Irène Schweizer-Rüdiger Carl Quartet. The latter two were significant. Gorter was part of the second iteration of Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity Orchestra, Niebergall and Kowald in tow once more (a 1970 Berlin Jazz Festival performance released in 2001) and the Schweizer-Rüdiger Carl group that was active for several years. “I met Rudiger in Wuppertal, that was a new jazz center by itself thanks to Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald,” wrote Gorter. “Sometimes I stayed at the studio that he shared with guitar wizard Hans Reichel. When Irene and Rudiger started playing together, they asked me to join and we played many places in the early ‘70s, with Heinrich Hock, Louis Moholo, or Alan Bateman on drums.” That band made only one full album, 1974’s Goose Pannée (FMP) but did have a track on the For Example - Workshop Freie Musik 1969 - 1978, the FMP boxed set. 1974-75 was an important period for two other reasons. Besides the aforementioned collaborations as well as work with the Boy Edgar Big Band and the small groups of Maurice Horsthuis and Toon van Vliet, Gorter was one of the musicians who helped establish Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, ultimately one of Europe’s premier venues for avant garde music, performing on its October 1st, 1974 opening night with the Burton Greene Quartet. Then in March 1975, Breuker asked Gorter to be a member of his Kollektief. Gorter described the group’s music as such: “Willem’s music had a lot of freedom. There were often tightly arranged written sections that would suddenly end and then the fun was to play on as if the arrangement continued – there was usually no such thing as chord changes – or to let the thing fall off a cliff ... Anyway, the music always felt fresh to play, even after many concerts, and there was a great mix of individual input and group discipline and cooperation. The Kollektief’s music linked the recognizable to the unexpected, often in 90-degree turns. It was surprising but accessible. For us musicians there was a wide spectrum of activities, from theater plays to movie music to interpretations of classical music and a lot of traveling to places where we found appreciative audiences, ranging from Australian school children to Chinese businessmen.” The Kollektief would go on to make over three dozen albums, mostly released on Breuker’s BV Haast label, and perform all over the world, including during the Klap op de Vuurpijl (roughly, Top It All Off) Festival, taking place over five days at the end of each year from 1976-2005. Its book mixed Breuker and other band member pieces with tunes from various pages of the Great American Songbook and drawn from the classical canon, as well as other sources, presented in a highly theatrical manner best appreciated live and mixing in humor in refreshing contrast to the dour stage demeanor of many an improviser. As busy as the Kollektief would keep him, Gorter still pursued other projects, some including fellow Kollektief members, including Breuker, and only existing on stages, such as groups under the leadership of Maarten van Norden, Sean Bergin, Boy Raaymakers, Pierre Courbois, Nedly Elstak, Jasper van ‘t Hof, Misha Mengelberg, and others. A representative sampling of those can be found in the archive of the Bimhuis (https://www.bimhuis.nl/archief); when he was in Amsterdam, this would be Gorter’s home near his home. But there were also ones documented as albums: Maine, the 1975 collaboration of American trombonist Roswell Rudd with Dulfer, Gorter, and drummer Martin van Duynhoven, was made up of music by Sonny Rollins and Rudd (who had been coming to and working in the Netherlands since the mid ‘60s both with the New York Art Quartet and also locals like Loevendie). There were two 1977 dates by Cuypers, Zeeland Suite also including another bassist in South African expatriate Harry Miller; the 1979 Maarten Van Norden/Boy Raaymakers quartet date Chicken Song, completed by drummer Peter Nykyruj (of Mike Osborne fame); and a pair of 1980 albums spearheaded by the aforementioned trumpeter/composer Elstak (and released on his Coreco label; Gorter had loosely studied harmony with him in the ‘60s): To Build was led by Soesja Citroen’s name, who was one of five singers alongside Elstak, Breuker, Gorter, and Van Duynhoven for Sad Trumpets. The most significant, at least in terms of international exposure, came in July 1984, when Gorter, Mengelberg, and Bennink joined forces with two Americans, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and trombonist George Lewis, for the Soul Note release Change of Season (Music Of Herbie Nichols). Another important recording came 13 years later with Legendary: The 27th of May 1997, in a reunion with Hampel, who was fêting his seminal Heartplants SABA album from 1965 with original participants Courbois, Schlippenbach, and Schoof, Gorter standing in for his late friend Buschi Niebergall. One interesting takeaway from this is that it is often thought that after Breuker split with his fellow Instant Composers Pool founders Mengelberg and Bennink there were two distinct worlds in Dutch avant garde jazz; however, there were musicians like Gorter who operated in both spheres. The new millennium found Gorter in several new projects: the mostly American blues/jazz band New Texas Swing from American saxophonist and then fellow Kollektief member Alex Coke with singer Tina Marsh and drummer John Betsch; the aptly named though horn-heavy Drummers Double Bill from Arend Niks and Verdurmen; 2000 recording The Compositions Of Eric Dolphy (BV Haast) with Coke, Breuker, Eric Vloeimans, Frank van Bommel, and John Engels; and Bo Van De Graaf’s I Compani; and the Rahsaan Roland Kirk “tribute” band Reeds & Deeds, also put together by Van De Graaf. The Dolphy project had a personal resonance for Gorter, more specifically a much younger version of himself. In 1964, when he was 16, Gorter attended the Charles Mingus Sextet performance at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, a band with Dolphy, Johnny Coles, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard, and Dannie Richmond, which Gorter calls “the best ever ... Halfway through a trumpet solo by Johnny Coles, Eric left the stage while playing and walked into the hall. He ended up right next to my seat, way in the back. For a 16-year-old, that may have been a life-changing experience.” In 2011, Gorter was given the opportunity to celebrate Dolphy once more with a concert at the Bimhuis: “Eric Dolphy at The Five Spot Revisited,” with the legendary recording’s repertoire played by himself, Tom Arthurs, Rudi Mahall/Alex Coke (as his bass clarinet and saxophone/flute sides), Benoît Delbecq, and John Betsch. Gorter joined the multimedia ensemble I Compani, founded by Van De Graaf in 1985, in 2010. As he wrote, “Bo van de Graaf just called it quits for I Compani, which I understand but regret. He led that band for 40 years through great adventures and I was happy to participate since 2010 or so. If anyone is comparable to Breuker in the amount of initiatives he took, it is him. Original pieces are blended with film music and live video, in various lineups from septet to 18-piece band. His music has the space, freedom and versatility of Breuker’s, but in a different way. Fun!” When asked about the European scene in which he came up, Gorter replied, “At that time every European city had a very original and recognizable improvised music scene, or a few of them, like London with both the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Brotherhood of Breath,” he wrote. “And they all had international contacts and were sharing with each other. So, the originality of these approaches, and the mutual respect, encouraged the exchange between countries and scenes and the musicians and their supporters took the initiative to made it happen.” As for his own methodology towards, as shown in this piece, the variety of musical situations in which he has taken part, Gorter spoke both simply and profoundly: “From the beginning I played both free improvisation and tunes based on chord changes. Learning on stage was an option in the ‘60s, which sometimes led to embarrassment but more often to improvement. My approach is: first try to play what you hear, then figure out what others call it (= music theory), then apply that to play better what you hear and so on. Nowadays much education starts on the second step ...”
© 2026 Andrey Henkin
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