About Time

A New York friend involved in the music business tells a story about a panicked phone call she once got from a hip American bandleader on tour in Europe: my bass player has to drop out, and I need a replacement right away: a swinger who can read complicated charts, and is comfortable playing weird outside stuff with unfamiliar people. They got anybody like that over here? My friend, who used to keep a place in Amsterdam, said, yeah I know a guy. Let me make a call.

Ernst Glerum stepped in, finished the tour, saved the day.

Most years, when the Boy Edgar Prize is announced, somebody grumbles: how could they give it to that not-ready/overrated/terrible person? About the only complaint anyone could make this year would be, they’re only getting around to Glerum now? This world class bass player packs a full quiver of modern strategies, served up with a plump, round tone and top-of-the-beat buoyancy out of the late 1950s, that golden age of jazz bass and pliant rhythm sections.

Our panicky American didn’t say if his bassist needed to play arco—maybe he thought that was asking too much. But Ernst may be at his best, wielding a bow. He doesn’t get that nasal or leathery tone so many jazz bassists get, sawing, the revered Paul Chambers included. Limber Glerum’s bowed timbre has heft, but it’s lighter and sweeter—not that he can’t grind when he wants to. And when a bassist plays arco, you know instantly if they’re in tune, the way Glerum is.

Of course great jazz bass playing is really about time, and Ernst’s time feel is extremely good. But what would you expect after so many gigs with Han Bennink and Ernst Reijseger? Put him on with Art Hodes, Bud Shank or the Ebony Band, he’ll find a way to swing.

Sometimes a leader needs a bassist who’s dead-on precise in pitch and timing. Ernst’s talents gifts are crucial to the mid-’90s Lighter by Janssen Glerum Janssen, one of Dutch improvised music’s high-water marks. I’d once called the trio a chamber group masquerading as a jazz band. The piano/bass/drums lineup speaks for itself and to a grand tradition. But Guus Janssen’s compositions may call for a highwire act’s precision: meetings on exact pitches at exact moments (as on “After AT,” for Art Tatum). Any sloppiness or misstep, the whole effect is destroyed. “Tune for F” is the bassist’s tour de force, the melody played entirely in (sometimes double-stopped) harmonics.

Glerum has his own trio in Omnibus, where he’s usually the piano player, sometimes channeling his inner Ramsey Lewis. (Piano was his second instrument, growing up—after guitar.) You might look at Omnibus’s straightaheady music as What He Really Wants to Do, but it’s probably more like one more interesting thing to do. Still, for all his experience in and gift for open improvising, Ernst has always been a jazz guy at heart—even if the chamber-gaming Amsterdam String Trio with Reijseger and Maurice Horsthuis had been his idea.

The rhythm trio he’s played in longest is with Bennink and Misha Mengelberg, in or out of ICP. (Envy or pity the visiting soloist who meets them on stage.) With Han the time takes care of itself, though Glerum may have to fight to be heard. Misha meanwhile delights in feints and deliberately missed appointments. Glerum mediates between drums and piano, referee at a professional wrestling match, but may also wedge in a layer of his own: hear his choogling bassline on any ICP “Caravan.” He’s the bedrock for ICP’s rhythm section and string section both, has an ex-orchestra musician’s love of blending with other strings.

Glerum demonstrates that when shopping for a bassist, you don’t have to choose between a classical player’s eloquent arco and jazzbo’s propulsive throb. He’ll even throw in gamesplaying chops picked up from Mengelberg, Horsthuis and Paul Termos. Ernst can jump into some of the weirdest situations bassists step into, or play straight and unironic jazz, and look happy either way.

We didn’t even get to his nurturing younger players as teacher, jam session traffic cop or bandleader. Let alone what he does to a Philicorda.

I was in New York when the Prize was announced. Next evening I ran into ICP trumpeter Thomas Heberer at a concert; he’d already heard the news. He asked, how many members of today’s ICP have won the national prize? (He’s German, wasn’t asking for himself.) We ticked them off, going back to the Wessel Ilcken Prize: Misha, Han, Michael Moore, Ab Baars, Wolter Wierbos, Tobias Delius—all tallied, 70 percent of the band. No other group I can recall comes close. Unless you count Janssen Glerum Janssen.