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Letter: Willem Breuker obituary

This article is more than 13 years old

Nick Williams writes: Your obituary of Willem Breuker (30 July) neglects to mention his fruitful collaboration with the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. In the late 60s, as part of Andriessen's rebellion against the conservative Dutch musical establishment, he composed a number of works incorporating Breuker as improviser, a wild-card element of freedom in an otherwise fully composed environment. These included Ittrospezione III Concept II in 1965 and Spektakel, written for the 1970 World Exposition in Japan, which Breuker made a new version of, at Andriessen's request, for the Holland Festival.

Breuker's rough-edged sound and stylistic openness were an important influence on Andriessen's emerging politically engaged take on American minimalism, and it was to Breuker that he turned for help in creating Orkest de Volharding, which also shared a number of players with the early Willem Breuker Kollektief. Breuker's squonking tenor sax sound can be heard on the live recording of the premiere of Andriessen's De Volharding, and Andriessen appears as keyboard player on the recording of Breuker's score for Brecht's play Baal.

Along with Andriessen and Misha Mengelberg, Breuker had a huge impact on the Dutch project to break down the barriers between what was then (in the 60s and 70s) seen as "highbrow" and "lowbrow" music, creating a new kind of audience for jazz, improvised and composed musics. I saw him at the Huddersfield contemporary music festival in 2000, conducting (in the widest sense) La Banda, the town band of Ruvo di Puglia. His invitation to the audience to come on stage and conduct, and his final lap of honour around the concert hall, carried on the shoulders of band members (who clearly loved his anarchic spirit), expressed a humour, vitality and freedom from convention that was his contribution to Dutch musical life.

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