European Union Quartet – The Dark Peak

Atmosphere and emotions are key words for the European Union Quartet and its CD ‘The Dark Peak’. A quartet that is really European with its combination of a Dutch, a German, a Slovak and an English jazzmusician.
The title piece (by bassist Gavin Barras) has a nearly picturesque quality: one hears a landscape growing in the sheer suggestive lines of sax and guitar. Adventurous music-making is what these nine, own compositions have in common. It can be in subtle musing, with a dreamlike feel, like in the beautiful soundscape of ‘House by the lake’. Or in the way the quartet grows together towards a structure in ‘Reddish Vale’.
All four instruments are equally important in there improvisations and strikingly together in emotionality saxplayer Iman Spaargaren’s composition ‘Zieleroersel’ is all about emotions and it is a joy to hear how suggestive and controlled the band explores form and sounds.
The European Union Quartet plays a modern jazz that looks for the inside of things. With great emotional and melodic qualities.