Saskia Laroo

Saskia Laroo, a soft-toned and economical trumpeter shaped in large part by Miles Davis, moves with equal ease between electronic acid jazz, club sounds, hip-hop, and straight-ahead acoustic jazz while also handling bass duties. Born and raised in the Netherlands, she took up the trumpet at seven and first turned toward jazz during her teenage years. Her debut, the 1994 release It’s Like Jazz on her self-founded Laroo label, blended acid jazz, hip-hop, and dance elements that occasionally echoed US3. That approach carried over in comparable fashion to her 1998 follow-up, Bodymusic. In 1999 she shifted direction toward acoustic jazz on her third album, Jazzkia—an effort conceived largely as a tribute to Davis—followed by the fourth album Sunset Eyes 2000, which gave prominent space to the great tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards.