EHBO

Several years ago, EHBO performed to a packed house at Cultureel Café De Amer. A second concert was promised, but bringing four musicians of this caliber together again proved no simple task. This season, it has finally happened.

The quartet was formed during the Han Bennink Four-Day Festival at the Roode Bioscoop. Ernst Glerum, Han Bennink, Benjamin Herman and Oscar Jan Hoogland have each earned their stripes extensively in the jazz and improvisation scene, and now come together for a limited number of concerts.

Han Bennink is internationally regarded as the Netherlands' best-known jazz drummer. In the 1960s he worked with Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery and Eric Dolphy, among others. In 1967 he founded the Instant Composers Pool with Misha Mengelberg and Willem Breuker. Bassist Ernst Glerum, who has performed with Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz, Uri Caine, Bennie Maupin and Don Byron, is also part of that collective. Saxophonist Benjamin Herman is known from New Cool Collective and countless other projects, ranging from punk and smooth jazz to free improvisation and groove. Pianist Oscar Jan Hoogland is a leading figure in the Amsterdam improvisation scene and the last student of Misha Mengelberg - described by hothousejazz.nl as a representative of the 'fourth generation' of Dutch improvisers, in the line of Mengelberg, Guus Janssen and Cor Fuhler.

De Volkskrant wrote about the quartet: "EHBO is a quartet with four of the best jazz musicians in the Netherlands, from as many generations. What these four put down seems so effortless, but however loosely: they play together with extraordinary skill."