Eric Vloeimans Fugimundi

In the period between the two World Wars jazz was bigger in Europe than in the States. In his 1946 book Jazz, From Congo to Swing, Belgian writer Robert Goffin observed that “European intellectuals rapidly succumbed to the charm of the American music.” In fact, it turned out that black American jazzmen were so lionized in Europe that many settled there. In the ’70s a different dynamic set in. On the heels of free jazz, which took Europe by storm, Germany’s ECM label began recording mainly European artists whose LPs featured sparse, atmospheric settings. Trumpeter Vloeimans, a Netherlander, now has 12 CDs out on Challenge Jazz, a Dutch-based label that continues this tradition. Recorded at Yoshi’s Jazz Club in Oakland last October, Vloeimans and his trio (Harmen Fraanje, piano; Anton Goudsmit, guitar) work through eight originals and one classic—“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”—with, for me, very mixed results. Their delicate treatment of the opener, “Corleone,” contrasts sharply with the frenetic “March of the Carpenter Ants.” The seven-minute “Rainbow,” a duet, is well served with Franjee’s oblique interpolations pairing nicely with Vloeimans’ bolder statements. Not jazz per se; it’s more, as the press release reads, “pure (trumpet-) poetry.”