Jacob ter Veldhuis (1951) began his career in rock music and studied composition and electronic music at the Groningen Conservatory, where he was awarded the Dutch Composition Prize in 1980. During the eighties he made a name for himself with melodious, heartfelt compositions; music that does not eschew effect and, without being sugary or contrived, gratifies the ear. Ter Veldhuis makes superb use of electronics, incorporating audio samples from the Gulf War, Chet Baker and the Jerry Springer Show. His popular CD Heartbreakers is a colourful mix of 'high' and 'low' culture. Long queues at the box office for the four-day Jacob ter Veldhuis Festival in Rotterdam in 2001 already attested to the growing popularity of this composer, both in the Netherlands and abroad.

His Goldrush Concerto, the Third String Quartet and several of his so called boombox pieces like Grab it! became hits, and various choreographers have been inspired by his music, like Hans van Manen and Nanine Linning, with whom he closely cooperated. A controversial figure in certain circles, ter Veldhuis dares to stand up to what he calls the 'washed-out avant garde'. He strives to liberate new music from its isolation by employing a direct, at times provocative idiom that spurns 'the dissonant', in Ter Veldhuis' view a completely devalued means of musical expression. His 'coming-out' as a composer of ultra-tonal, mellifluous music reached its climax with the video oratorio Paradiso*, released in 2003 on dvd and cd by Chandos. At the Holland Festival 2005, the premiere of ...NOW...* by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra received standing ovations.

* both with videos by Studio Drupsteen

GRAB IT! (1999)
for tenor saxophone and boombox (CD)

Grab it! for tenor saxophone and   ghettoblaster was composed November 1999 for Arno Bornkamp, commissioned by the Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst. When I was asked to write a piece that would comment on French composer Christian Lauba solo piece 'Hard', I decided to   make something which would be even HARDER. Not in a technical or virtuoso sense - how could I, HARD was in this regrad unbeatable - but rather in a musical dramatic sense. To me the saxophone is part of the recent American music history. Growing up in   the sixties with blues, jazz and rock, American music had a strong impact on my own music. In my opinion, the roots of all these different musical styles can be found in the American language, in the spoken word. I think that language is one of the origins of music. The more emotional the spoken word, the more it starts 'singing' and becomes 'music'.

In GRAB IT! I tried to   explore the 'no-man's-land' between language and music. I selected voice samples from an old American documentary called about juvenile deliquency, called 'Scared Straight', in which life sentenced prisoners played an important role. Thier world, on the fringe of society, with its heartbreaking verbal assaults moved me deeply and was very inspiriing.The rough vital sound of these shouting men formed a perfect unity with the harsh and poweful sound of the tenor saxophone. GRAB IT ! is a kind of juet, a 'duel' i fyou like, for tenor and soundtrack. The tenor competes unisono with a perpetual range of syllables, words and sentences, demanding endurance of the performer. The meaning of the lyrics becomes gradually clear during the piece, as well as the hopeless situation for the prisoners, and suicide is not uncommon : 'He tied one end around the pipe, and he hung himself. So he went out the back door rapped up in in a green sheet with a tag on his toe... You lose everything!' In a way death row is a metaphor for like. Yet the piece is not just sad, ban can also be understood as a 'memento viver'. Life is worth living : Grab it!'

After a performance by Arno Bornkamp at the World Saxophone Congress in Montreal in July 2000, GRAB IT! Soon became a repertoire piece, regularly played and recorded arount de the globe by many soloists. I added an ad lib. drum part, a bass part, and made a version for electric guitar by request of Kevin Gallagher. In 2003 Willem Breuker asked me to wrtte the GRAB IT! XXL, an arrangement for big band/orchestra, to be performed by the Metoppole Orcestra starring Hans Dulfer on tenor, to be premiered at the Dutch Music Days of December 2003.

Pitch Black(1998)
for saxophone quartet and boombox (CD)

Pitch Black was written in the summer of 1998 for the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, commisioned by the Almelo Chamber Music Society and the Dutch Fund for the Creation of Music. The ghettoblaster reproduces the voice of trumpet player Chet Baker, from one of the last interviews before his tragic death by falling out from and Amsterdam hotel room window in 1988. Baker talks about his past as a drug addict, his life in prison ('it was pitch black in there you know') his first audition with Charlie Parker ('among 40 other trumpet players - or were there 60?') and playing without drumes ('more cool'). These 'spoken word melodies' form the musical themes in Pitch Black. Pitch Black is part of a sequence of ghettoblaster compositions that Jacob ter Veldhuis wrote, like May this bliss never end, Lipstick, Grab it! and Heartbreakers.

Pitch Black

GRAB IT!