Bill Bruford - World Drummers Ensemble Part 2 (Live In Amsterdam, 2005)

This production was recorded in Amsterdam in 2005, as part of a series of concerts called ‘The Big Bang’. I know the city well, having played pretty much every club and theatre large and small. Most memorable were the midnight concerts at the Royal Concertgebouw (concert hall) in the 1970s, with King Crimson. On the stroke of midnight we descended down a long flight of red-carpeted stairs, past the busts of all the great classical composers, through a warm fug of marijuana smoke, to huge reaction from a packed hall, as we laid into ‘Easy Money’. That November 1973 concert was subsequently released on a DGM Records CD as ‘The Nightwatch’. As a people, the Dutch are mad for percussion, and were early adopters of serious study of the drum kit at the Sweelink Conservatorium in Amsterdam. That city is the home of the Concertgebouw Orchestra of course, within which resides the New Percussion Group of Amsterdam, comprised of enterprising young drummers with a modern orchestral background. I recorded a CD for