Ernst Reijseger

Cellist Ernst Reijseger earned recognition across avant-garde jazz, contemporary classical, and improvised music during the 1980s and 1990s. The Boy Edgar Prijs, the Netherlands’ foremost jazz honor, came his way in 1985; nine years afterward a Dutch television documentary profiled him, and the North Sea Jazz Festival presented him with its Bird Award the following year. Born in Naarden, Netherlands, in 1954, he took up the cello at eight. By the early 1970s he was already active in improvised music, working alongside Derek Bailey, Martin van Duynhoven, and Michael Moore. During the 1980s he joined the Theo Loevendie Consort, the Amsterdam String Trio, and the Guus Janssen Septet; in the mid-1990s he became part of the Arcado String Trio. Throughout those two decades he remained a mainstay of Misha Mengelberg’s ICP Orchestra and appeared in multiple ensembles with Gerry Hemingway, among them a trio formed with pianist Georg Graewe in the late 1980s. Around the same period Reijseger, Moore, and drummer Han Bennink—all ICP colleagues—founded the Clusone Trio, taking its name from the Italian festival where the three first performed together. The group toured extensively, including a 1995 journey through Australia, China, and Vietnam. After issuing its fifth album in 1999 (its second for Hat, following earlier releases on Gramavision), the trio disbanded on its tenth anniversary. Reijseger departed the ICP Orchestra that same year. He continued to record and perform in varied contexts: solo, as on 1998’s Colla Parte for Winter & Winter; in avant-garde jazz settings, including Randomacoustics editions of Graewe/Reijseger/Hemingway projects and the Hemingway Quintet’s Waltzes, Two-Steps & Other Matters of the Heart on GM Recordings; and in a 1999 collaboration with the Sardinian choir Tenore e Concordu de Orosei, issued as Colla Voche on Winter & Winter. Additional partners have included Yo-Yo Ma, Louis Sclavis, Franky Douglas, Joelle Leandre, Trilok Gurtu, and Phil Minton. He periodically conducts cello workshops for children.

Reijseger maintained an equally active schedule in the twenty-first century. While his association with Winter & Winter persisted, he also recorded for Unorthodox, BUZZ-Records, and Nimbus West between 2000 and 2002. He returned to Winter & Winter for the 2002 duet album I Love You So Much It Hurts with Italian pianist Franco D’Andrea. Over the next fourteen years nearly all of his releases appeared on that label, aside from two Leo dates as featured guest and 2011’s The Skopje Connection Meets Ernst Reijseger on Losen. His 2008 solo cello album Tell Me Everything ranks among his most widely praised recordings. Reijseger composed the score for Requiem for a Dying Planet, Sounds for Two Films by Werner Herzog—The Wild Blue Yonder—The White Diamond (2006); Herzog remarked, “He is a magnificent cellist, and he can do anything, anything on his cello. He could play the civil war, the American Civil war on his cello.” Their partnership extended further: Reijseger scored Rescue Dawn (2005), My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), and Salt and Fire (2016), all issued by Winter & Winter. He also worked with director Martijn Maria Smits on Anvers (2009), C’est Déjà L’été (2010), and Under the Weight of Clouds (2012). In 2010 he recorded two albums with the band BARANÁ: Elektro Shaman and Xenopolis.

The following year brought Klaarlichte Nacht: Musictheatre through the life and work of poet Herman de Coninck, a trio project with pianist Wolfert Brederode and actor-accordionist Felix Strategier. For his sixtieth birthday in 2014 Reijseger issued two recordings, among them Feature, presenting his compositions performed by a large ensemble that included accordionist Luciano Biondini, vocalists Mola Sylla and Ceylan Ertem, keyboardist Harmen Fraanje, Purves on percussion, and four additional cellists. The next year he released the trio album Count Till Zen with Sylla and Fraanje. In 2016 he unveiled his major work The Volcano Symphony with Forma Antiqva under Aaron Zapico, which led to the further collaboration Walking Out the following year.