Bimhuis 3.0

Having spent a lot of time in the Bimhuis on the Oude Schans – out front as audience member, and occasionally behind the scenes as a cd producer or book editor for hire – I was apprehensive about the spiffy new version. I’d been living in Amsterdam when the move had been announced in the late ’90s, and like other regulars (musicians, say), I resisted the idea. Why mess up a good thing? (Short answer: ’cause neighbors who moved in after the place was established complained about ‘the noise.’ May their next homes border Schiphol.) Never mind that that Bimhuis – Bimhuis II? – bore little resemblance to the skanky place it had been before a massive renovation in the early ’80s.

Players’ discomfort with the move made some mean onlookers gleeful: the convention-shattering Bimhuis improvisers feared change? Yes but: the concentration necessary to instant compose or remake musical syntax or whatever requires a certain amount of clear mental space. Familiar surroundings can help.

In June I visited Amsterdam, and saw the new hall at last. Oddly enough my first reaction to Bimhuis III was identical to Bimhuis II, which I’d known by reputation long before seeing it: I thought it would be bigger. Which is to say, the architects didn’t screw up that part of it. The Bimhuis can get pretty crowded sometimes, and the new place has more capacity than the old to ease the pressure on nights when big jazz stars or kaseko bands take the stage. But more important, on sparsely attended evenings, the room doesn’t feel deserted: that’s one crucial way to support experimental music. I worry how long those cushy red seats will last, though they’re way comfier than Bimhuis II’s perforated metal benches. Sightlines are still good (with one exception: if you’re sitting in a portable chair behind the cushioned rows, at the back of the pit). Musicians say they like the sound, and are already using the hall for a daytime recording studio.

The layout of the main room deliberately mimics the old one in outline – a small sunken amphitheater which could be sealed off from the adjoining bar or not according to circumstances – and the rounded bar with the shelved bottles behind suggests the old Bim Café cut in half. (The whole bigger and glitzier place looks like the set of a TV sitcom about the old Bimhuis.) You can still sit at the bar and gaze out at the water below, except now the view is more spectacular – the whole place snapped to attention late one night when the Piet Heinkade bridge went up. One disorienting touch: bar management doesn’t appear to treat regular customers like the enemy.

Dressing rooms are still downstairs from the stage; the stairs is stage left instead of right, and the main dressing room is much larger and welcoming (brilliant addition: a pod coffeemaker, and plenty of pods). At the bottom of those stairs, you still make two quick lefts to enter the dressing room: another subliminal echo of the old place to make old-timers feel more at home.

The dressing room’s big windows look south, out over the kade, tram and train tracks, off to the city rooftops beyond the Oosterdok. If someone strolling by happens to glimpse up at an unselfconscious musician changing his pants – well, what’s Amsterdam without a racy window show?

The glass wall behind the mainstage has an even more commanding view of the tracks and the city. In June, house managers seemed undecided about whether to leave the curtains open or closed during shows. Open, open, open: all that silent bustle below and beyond is visual counterpoint to the often complex music on stage – a reminder that jazz and improvised music are grounded in the world, not cut off from it. Even if it feels a bit like the place is floating in the clouds.