The Journey of Daan Herweg
Jazz & Pop, Zwolle
Every career in the art follows a different route. In The journey of column of the ArtEZ Business Centre, teachers will tell you about the key moments in their career. There is rarely much time to discuss this in class - but now, you'll have an opportunity to find out what choices they made, and how they got to where they are now.
Daan Herweg teaches Piano at the Jazz & Pop program in Zwolle. His maiden voyage as a jazz musician began when he is asked to join the Quincey quintet during the first year of his BA studies in Amsterdam. Daan grew into a seasoned musician through countless performances and tours with musicians like Caro Emerald and Lange Frans & Baas B. But his heart lies with jazz and Daan discovered that his talent for creating, composing, producing and arranging gives him ample opportunities to keep returning to that passion again and again.
I'm Daan Herweg, jazz pianist and producer/composer. I studied at the conservatory of Amsterdam and, during my MA, for some time at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. I graduated in 2007. I have a very liberal view of music and art; I love the most complicated free jazz and heavy classical music, but also hiphop, dance, pop and pop culture. I embrace urgent human expression in all its forms. I've been working successfully in the Dutch music scene for 20 years.
2001 - 2011 I'm asked for the Quincey quintet
Sometime during the first year of my BA program in jazz piano at the Conservatory of Amsterdam (I must have been around 20), I played some of my own work at a recital. Trumpet player Diederik Rijpstra heard me play and asked me right away to join the jazz band Quincey. With the Quincey quintet, we made 4 records over 12 years featuring many of my own pieces. We played all over the Netherlands and organized our own tours in Europe. In 2007, we were a finalist in the Dutch Jazz Competition. Quincey was my maiden voyage as a professional jazz musician, we were inexhaustible, and money was always of secondary importance. We did the management ourselves and took it quite seriously; we got together every Wednesday morning to talk about it. At some point, we also signed with a label, but we still had to manage a lot ourselves.
The entrepreneurial lesson here is that if you're lucky enough to find a group of people who are on the same level and share your love for the same kind of music, you should always go for it. Our first tours consisted of taking a huge bus full of equipment to Southern Europe and playing jazz outdoors all summer as if our lives depended on it. We often ended up sleeping on the streets. Later, the tours became more serious, playing in clubs and homes for a wide range of interesting contacts. There was no business plan or budget in Excel - we just went for it.
2002 - 2006 Writing on big hits by Lange Frans and Baas B and touring for two years
Together with producer Jan van Wieringen and Bart Zeilstra (Baas B), I did a writing session in 2000 and we made a beat for a track on senseless street violence. The song became Zinloos by Lange Frans and Baas B. Jan later signed on for the whole album Supervisie and I also contributed to several songs on that record. It became a huge hit with multiple top 10 listings (the hit song Moppie was also partially composed by me). We won an Edison for the 'best urban album' and I toured festivals and theaters with the LFBB band for two years, as band leader and keyboard player. While I didn't play any jazz, performing 80+ concerts in stadiums and mega-venues taught me a lot about being a musician and I truly became a 'professional'. Jan van Wieringen and I wrote countless tracks in the years after that for a range of pop and hiphop artists and media. During my early years as a composer/producer, starting in 2004, I signed with publishing agent Pennies From Heaven.
The entrepreneurial lesson: write! If you have the talent to create, compose, produce and arrange, it's a very natural complement to being a performing musician. These things have a lot of synergy.
2005 - 2007 Back to Jazz: MA exchange with the Manhattan School of Music in New York
After two years of touring with Lange Frans while also finishing my program at the conservatory, I realized at a certain moment in 2005, as I was studying on a Yamaha CP 80 backstage, that it was time for me to quit the LFBB band and its comfortable lifestyle and get back to hardcore piano practice. I decided to do an MA exchange with the Manhattan School of Music in New York and 'return' to Jazz. In New York, I sometimes studied for 8 hours a day and went to every session.
The entrepreneurial lesson: it was liberating to be 'just' a student again and not be involved with the music economy's never-ending cycle of gigs. Sometimes it's not about economics - sometimes it's about not making compromises. In life, you have to strike a balance between the two. But getting really skilled at something is always a good business plan.
2006 - Interview with the legendary Sal Mosca
During my time in New York, I did research for my MA degree on jazz pianists and their largely autodidactically developed technique. I interviewed a lot of great jazz pianists for this. Most memorable to me was my interview with the ancient Sal Mosca: one of the last living former students of Lennie Tristano. I looked him up in Westchester where he lived in some kind of empty loft space with only a piano. It was like a mystical experience.
The entrepreneurial lesson: by doing serious research and broadly developing yourself (during your studies and beyond), you'll add substance and intellectual value to your craft. It deepens your music, makes it more palpable and allows you to add a narrative that makes music less abstract. Sometimes, when you can give words to your art and connect it to the world around you, it can be easier to 'sell'. But it should be an honest story, not a 'fake' concept, or it will just make you unhappy.
2007 - 2008 Touring with Pete Philly and Perquisite
Back in the Netherlands, I passed my MA exams and started touring with Pete Philly and Perquisite. It turned out to be a bad experience for all sorts of reasons, both personally and musically. But it has taught me a lot about my boundaries in musical collaborations and that you don't need to be able to collaborate with everyone.
The entrepreneurial lesson: find out what kind of environment and what circumstances let you flourish. Work hard, but it's definitely OK to have (unspoken) standards for your work environment and fellow musicians. You don't have to get along with everybody
2010 - Start Caro Emerald band
Around 2009, Jan van Wieringen and I wrote numerous pop demos and music for media. I asked Caroline van der Leeuw (Caro Emerald) to join as a demo singer. I knew Caro from my very first high school band Blue Smoke from Amsterdam. We both went to the conservatory and did a lot of gigs together. Later on, David Schreurs also joined our little production unit. This collaboration eventually sprouted the Caro Emerald band: the biggest pop music success in Dutch history, sextuple platinum and many awards, including the pop award with the traditional beer shower at Noorderslag.
The entrepreneurial lesson: when there's a project that you're collaborating on and you're involved from the start, with huge potential that you're putting a lot of hours into, for little pay initially; make sure you're at least partially an owner of the concept and make sure you have a good contract drafted.
2010 - Christmas show with Caro Emerald in the HMH in Amsterdam
In December 2010, I was the Music Director and arranger of a huge Christmas show in the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam with Caro and a whole live orchestra. This remains one of the biggest and most amazing things I've ever done. I wrote and arranged an hour of music for the show, and also worked on the staging, the decor and the choreography. They released a DVD of the show afterwards. After this show, in January 2011, my collaboration with Caro Emerald and Jan van Wieringen came to a sudden and unexpected end, after two of the most intense years of my life. They decided to change almost their entire team overnight; a common phenomenon with projects that are suddenly wildly successful.
The entrepreneurial lesson: the working relationship between me as band leader and Music Director on the one hand, and the lead artist and producers on the other, was a complex one. I should have communicated things more clearly, both in terms of business and creatively, and not just let things happen. It can be good to institute a regular work meeting where you can speak openly about everything that's going on.
2011 - Start of production company Studio Key Element Music
At the end of November 2011, I followed a risky impulse and rented a huge studio space in Bos and Lommer, Amsterdam, without a business plan. It turned out to be a good gamble, especially when my business partner and engineer Ralph Verdult joined. This studio has housed my own production company Studio Key Element Music ever since. The company ties together all my different activities as songwriter, composer and producer. Numerous jazz and pop records have been recorded there, both with me as a producer and with others. This includes several of my own musical projects that I've toured with over the years: Anne Chris, Teus Nobel, Henk Kraaijeveld. We also produce a steady flow of media music for commercials and documentaries.
The entrepreneurial lesson: sometimes, you should follow your gut. Actually...always.
2013 - Release of trio album Lucid Musings
In 2013 (ten years later than planned) I released my own trio album Lucid Musings, with Tuur Moens on drums and Pat Cleaver on bass. For me, still a jazz pianist at heart, it was a creative catharsis. Finally, I wasn't playing pop, but we made our own, very modern jazz record. Ever since, I've been performing in the trio alongside a variety of contributors.
The entrepreneurial lesson: although a record without a concept and without compromise, featuring only the notes that you feel like playing, might not seem like the best business idea... in the end, it can be, because you're building your identity as an artist. You are you, and that's priceless.
2019 - On tour in China
Recently, in 2019, I went on tour through China with a collaborative project with vocalist Henk Kraaijeveld that I helped produce. From Beijing and Shanghai to Taiwan to finally perform a show at the Taichung Jazz Festival for 100,000 people with the national symphonic orchestra of Taiwan (for which I had arranged two massive symphonic works). It was a real childhood dream coming true, but the day before we flew to Taiwan, my mother died. I had to break it all off and fly back to Amsterdam immediately. I ended up missing the performance myself... Life turns out to be difficult to control.
Entrepreneurial lesson: if you have the opportunity to work with talented people and make music from the heart, you should always take it. Usually, it also works out business-wise in the long run, and you might find yourself taking your own music to the other side of the world.
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