Rolf Delfos
During the past twenty years Delfos cooperated on more then 50 Cd-productions, televisonprogrammes and a lot of project. The Frank Grasso Big Band in’83 became an inspiring episode. Delfos met Angelo Verploegen with whom he formed the Houdini’s in 1987 a jazzsextet. The created more then twelve albums (two of them recorded in New York at the studio of Rudy van Gelder) and had quite a succes in Holland and Europe, the States and Australia. In 1996 they received the Golden Nutcracker for their complete works. The Houdini’s initiated a lot of interesting projects such as ‘Porgy & Bess’ with the New Sinfonietta Amsterdam, , a Duke Ellington project , a Gil Evans/Miles Davis project with John Adams en The Schonberg-ensemble and a lot of tours during the last ten years (e.g. to .Canada and the U.S, Australia with a live recording-, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland etc.).
During the nineties Delfos was involved in different projects, stretching out from popmusic(Lois Lane and well known Dutch Artists as Frank Boeijen, Mieke Stemerdink) till worldmusic(The Cubopcity Big Band, the Portugese Paulo Gomesgroup, The Dollar Brandproject, Northsea concert with bandonenonplayer Gustavo Toker) and two initiatives for Children cd’s in cooperation with Erwin Hoorweg, painist and composer. With the last one he also organises business workshops(improvisation and recording) e.g. for HP and IBM.
Since 2006 there’s the initiative –together with Michael Varenkamp- for an interactive program for kids about the history of jazz: Little Louis and because of it’s succes they are invited this year -2009- to give a kids concert at the North Sea Jazz festival
During the last five years Delfos is involved as an arranger on the CD ‘Strange Fruit’ with singer Trijtntje Oosterhuis, which appeared at Blue Notes and was a huge succes in Holland(Platinum award). As a composer and player in bands as The Auratones(Cd Mazzu, Mazzu), The Lewinsky Quartet(No clubs in town and ‘Omnipotent’ for Challenge records) and the Saxophone quartet Artvark.
The last Cd with the Houdin’s was called ‘The General, a project involing improvisation and filmmusic for Buster Keaton’s classic The General van de Houdini’s , The last five years a new band appeared, called The Jazzinvaders www.thejazzinvaders.com Their first album became a huge succes in Japan(more then 10.000 copies sold). A fantastic combination of Drummer/DJ Phil Martin and samples and horns. Two years ago he was a co-producer for an album of a very young girl(14 years) called ‘Kim is back.. which appeared at the famous VERVE lable. Last year he did a tour with the Houdini’s and one of his legends, the great Gino Vannelli which resulted in the Cd ‘A Good Thing’
At this very moment working on cd’s for Artvark, The Auratones, the Jazzinvaders, his Big band ‘Licks and Brains’ and writing for different groups. Last but not least Rolf Delfos has its own radioprogram together with Bart Wirtz at Arrow Jazz FM called ‘Dutch Jazz’, a weekly program about all the Dutch Jazz musicians.