What a review from Russia! It is special when someone really takes the time to dig into your music and career. Thank you Leonid Auskern! In case your Russian is a bit rusty you can read the english verison below (long read).
“With the Dutch duo, which at that time was called Vandoorn, “Jazz-Square”, then on paper, was in active contact at the beginning of the 2000s. There have been reviews of two Vandoorn albums, released by Timeless Records, as well as interviews with the duo, to which the author of these lines also contributed. All these materials are on the site today. As it turned out, these years were a time of great success for Vandoorn: in 2001 the duo was awarded the Edison Jazz Award (this is the Dutch version of the Grammy), the next year, won the Julius Hemphill Contest in the field of composition, and in 2003 won the Nexus Guitar Award in the same nomination.
Since then, almost two decades have passed – and now Vandoorn is again on our, now electronic pages. However, the name of the duet now looks different: on the cover of the Crossing Canada album is Ineke Vandoorn & Marc van Vugt, emphasizing that the union of singer and pianist Ineke van Doorn and guitarist Marc van Vugt reigns absolute equality. Ineke and Marc, of course, did not stand still all these years. The duo recorded a lot (Crossing Canada is already the eleventh in their discography), toured a lot around the world, and Canada became one of the favorite concert routes for Ineke and Marc. In 2016 and 2018, they traveled all of Canada from east to west and fell in love with this huge country, so different from their native Netherlands. From the live recordings made during these tours, a new album was formed, whose name accurately reflects the conditions in which it was created.
In his program there are eleven compositions by the duo, also largely connected with impressions from numerous trips: from France to the island of Bali in Indonesia. Marc has written music almost everywhere, Ineke is the author of the lyrics of all the songs, and for Holysloot she composed music. In some tracks along with the Dutch duo, we hear Canadian instrumentalists, but, of course, Crossing Canada is primarily Ineke and Marc. Everything that pleased in those early albums remained, but now a great deal of experience has been added, and the level of understanding has reached telepathic heights. The lyrical compositions of the duo are completely different from the American ones, but from the first sounds of Marc’s guitar and from the first notes taken by Ineke, you understand that this is jazz and nothing else. Ineke is still fluent in both conventional and scat techniques, masterfully alternating them. The starting point of Dawn can serve as a business card of the duo. It begins with a long, almost two minutes, Marc’s guitar part, with its imagery reminiscent of a master brush’s landscape sketch, and then Ineke enters, first with lyrics, a little reminiscent of Joni Mitchell, and then with a virtuoso scat, the same song ends again with Marc’s guitar part . And in each song, regardless of its tempo and mood, a true jazz approach to performance is felt. There is also an exception: Blues for a Voice is really blues, and no less cool! In this album I did not hear Latin motifs that are characteristic of their early works, but, like a spectacular autograph, at the end of the program Liefde sounds, where, if I’m not mistaken, Ineke, like before, sings jazz in Dutch. It is in this capacity that I would recommend this album to the audience: excellent jazz in Dutch!
Leonid Auskern