Jazzitude | Richard Twardzik with Chet Baker Europe, 1955 by Jack Chambers (2)

Both concerts are preserved with excellent sound at the Netherlands Jazz Archive in Amsterdam, and the Kurhaus concert was edited and broadcast a few days later on AVRO radio Hilversum. Concert programs at both venues listed Russ Freeman, Bob Carter and Peter Littman in the band (Openneer 1993: 28), and Baker starts both concerts by correcting the listings and introducing Twardzik and Bond to the audience. The Dutch programs also listed 16 song titles from which the repertoire would supposedly be selected, but only a couple of those titles were actually called. None of Zieff’s charts is listed, and it appears that none was played before the sessions when they were recorded.

The list also does not include Tommyhawk, the Johnny Mandel tune recorded by Baker for Pacific Jazz with a sextet a year before, which was used prominently as the opener at both concerts. A photograph from the Kurhaus concert by Hans Buter shows Twardzik with a large score spread out before him (14.1). It is probably Tommyhawk, on which Mandel’s arrangement requires him to play a lively unison line with the trumpet and negotiate rapid changes.

At both concerts, Baker featured a ballad at a glacial tempo (I’m Glad There is You at Concertgebouw, Someone to Watch Over Me at Kurhaus), obviously confident that these audiences would sit still not only for his wistful singing but also for Twardzik’s ruminative accompaniment. In that, he was certainly right. A reviewer in the Dutch daily de Volkskrant noted that Twardzik’s “unabashedly romantic” approach “fits Baker’s intimate playing wonderfully” (translated for me by Bert Vuijsje as are the following). Jazz Journaal credited Twardzik with “a pleasant abundance of musicality,” and Rhythme, another jazz magazine, praised Twardzik as “a highly original soloist who journeys into melody à la Dave Brubeck and possesses a lively swing.”

Both concerts were abundantly photographed. At the Concertgebouw recital, the prize-winning photojournalist Ed van der Elsken made his first foray into jazz photography. (He would photograph jazz only from 1955 to 1959, collected in Elsken 1991.) We know that Liliane, the Helen of Troy who launched Baker’s European conquest, was with him in the Netherlands because Elsken photographed them there. Elsken’s most stunning image catches Twardzik in rapt concentration at the piano with Baker beside him, the glint of the spotlight on Baker’s trumpet making a symbolic fusion of the minds of the two musicians (14.2).

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