Interview: North Sea String Quartet

on the Green Pilot Tour

North Sea String Quartet

They stunned the audience at the Bimhuis with their performance during inJazz 2022, and they have been busy ever since. At the end of November, the North Sea String Quartet are embarking on their first tour of Sweden, courtesy of the Knutpunkt network of venues and the Green Pilot Tour support provided by Europe Jazz Network. During a good number of concerts and workshops, the NSSQ will present their unique approach to jazz and improvisation to the Swedish audience.

See the full program of the Green Pilot Tour by North Sea String Quartet here.

North Sea String Quartet consists of violinists Pablo Rodríguez and George Dumitriu, violist Yanna Pelser and Thomas van Geelen on cello. Pablo Rodríguez is a very colorful player from the Canary Islands who always brings a lot of energy to the stage. He’s taken percussive playing techniques to another level, which really adds another layer to the quartet’s music. He’s also great with computers and graphic design – he’s responsible for the NSSQ website – and he makes a great Spanish tortilla. George Dumitriu is an amazing multi-talent. He studied classical violin in his native Romania and jazz guitar in the Netherlands and is also a virtuosic violist and a prolific composer. He has a great sense of calm and loves to think outside the box. Yanna Pelser is a one-of-a-kind violist. She developed a certain freedom of movement, resulting in a wonderful rich tone and great responsiveness. She’s a creative songwriter with the clearest of ears and has a rare talent to sing and play simultaneously. Thomas van Geelen is really the musical motor of the quartet. He is praised for both his rhythmical talent as a bass player and his clear and precise tone with the bow. Before going into music he actually studied journalism, which still comes in handy as he writes many of the texts for the quartet. Below, Thomas answers questions in a conversation with Mark van Schaick, general manager of inJazz.

As a string quartet influenced by jazz, non-western and improvised music, do you have musical influences in common? Or does everybody bring their own, after which it magically combines?
‘I think our most common ground is our classical instrumental training, and everyone has studied jazz to some degree. But beyond that we all followed our own paths in improvised music: Pablo plays a lot of flamenco and Latin jazz, Yanna does a lot of free improvisation, George, having studied jazz guitar, is probably our most certified jazz cat, and I spent quite some time studying bass players. And because we write our own music, we’re able to brew this into a unique NSSQ blend. So yes, partly magical, but partly an ongoing process of hard work!’

‘I think one of the great parts of working with our own music, is that you have the freedom to do whatever the moment requires. And that becomes even easier now that we’re memorizing the repertoire.’

Thomas van Geelen

Improvisation
How much room for improvisation is there in your performances? Is it just the soloing or do you allow improvisation to creep into the structure of the compositions too?
‘Interesting point. As you mentioned, the soloing is obviously improvised, and so is the accompaniment usually. There are sections completely written out and some sections are completely free. In terms of structure, each piece has a certain road map, but it differs how much time we take for each part. The building blocks are usually all there, although we’re also experimenting on that level. I think one of the great parts of working with our own music, is that you have the freedom to do whatever the moment requires. And that becomes even easier now that we’re memorizing the repertoire.’

Who is the leader? Or, to put it differently: how far does democracy go in this quartet?
‘That depends on when you ask, haha. In general, I think democracy goes all the way with us. But of course, when someone brings a new piece to the group, we initially follow his or her lead. Even in tours or projects, there’s usually one of us in charge, but this can be any of us. We did make a more fixed division in tasks like social media, website, application texts, et cetera. I think it’s one of the great things about this group that we manage to divide the tasks more or less evenly, and that everyone makes a good effort to keep the quartet going.’

North Sea String Quartet interview

In what way are you a Dutch ensemble?
‘Good question. Though only Yanna and I are Dutch, the quartet has its base in Rotterdam, and we’ve all been educated in the Netherlands. George and Pablo have lived and worked here for over a decade, so they’ve had their fair share of cheese and “stroopwafels”. Moreover, I think it really fits the modern Dutch identity of blending cultures into a new, greater thing. Everyone brings his own cultural background, and we actively avoid being bound by genres, which is great. A multicultural quartet in a multicultural society.’

How about Sweden?
Any musical favourites from Sweden?
‘We all really like Swedish folk and jazz artists such as Väsen, Esbjörn Svensson and Johannes Geworkian Hellman. Besides that, I have my own history of listening to the progressive rock group The Flower Kings as a teenager; I even wrote a little string quartet piece called Bodin’s Waltz, which was inspired by the group’s keyboard player, Tomas Bodin.’

Green Pilot Tour logo

The obvious question: what are your expectations for this Green Pilot Tour?
‘It is great to make an effort in green touring! We’re first very happy and grateful for this opportunity to share our music with a new audience in Sweden and inspire young string players to improvise during our workshops. It’s great that we can do this in the Green Pilot Tour format; it means a lot to us to be able to contribute to this new, more sustainable way of touring. Hopefully, we can add some new fans to the NSSQ family and establish new professional connections for the future. And last but not least, with 7 concerts it’s the perfect preparation for the upcoming recording of our debut album, which is set for two weeks after the tour and to be released in May 2024!’