Reinier Baas is a Dutch guitarist, composer and recording artist with a DIY approach and an idiosyncratic body of work.
His latest records include “Mokum In Hi-Fi” (2019), with longtime collaborator Ben van Gelder, and “Smash Hits” (2018), with van Gelder and the Grammy-winning Metropole Orkest. His critically acclaimed 2016 “mainly instrumental work” titled “Reinier Baas vs. Princess Discombobulatrix” and his 2012 record “Mostly Improvised Instrumental Indie Music” both earned him an Edison Award.
Baas’s music is characterized by “unpredictability with a reassuring sense of overall form.” A description from the New York City Jazz Record reads, “The music was assembled in unusual ways. Arcane harmonies suggested Bartók or Stravinsky, but then the structures fractured and hip-hop rhythms suddenly hit hard and then everything became a wild flurry and improvised cacophonies before the music returned to solemn, ordered, if angular forms.”
Currently, Baas is a member of Benjamin Herman‘s punk/jazz group Bughouse, Ben van Gelder ‘s trio with Han Bennink, Simone Graziano ‘s FRONTAL, and Peter Gall‘s PARADOX DREAMBOX. As a composer, he has written works for the Pynarello SymphonyOrchestra, Metropole Orkest and theConcertgebouw Jazz Orchestra, as well as commissions for the North Sea Jazz Festival, Royal Concertgebouw, Bimhuis and November Music. As a soloist he has performed with the Metropole Orkest, the Concertgebouw Jazz Orchestra, Pynarello and the New Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra. Baas teaches at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music and Siena Jazz University.
