An interview in the Dutch Nationaal Muziekinstrumentenfonds Magazine

(English translation below)

Text: Eva Hoeke Photography: Marcel Bakker

Saxophonist Ties Mellema has been making music that doesn't fit into any pigeonholes for thirty years. For his latest project, he draws inspiration from techno, soul, Louis Andriessen, Bach and Fauré. 'I could never have made that CD with PEAX without having cancer twice. In the face of adversity, I always look at what is still possible.'

'We live in strange times,' says Ties Mellema (46) from behind the bar of music center Splendor. He has just shown the large hall, the small one as well by the way, and now he is making coffee because Monday morning has only just begun. Outside, the sweepers of the municipality sound, inside the bubbling of the coffee machine. And if you listen very carefully, you can hear the squeaks and creaks in the saxophonist's head. Ties, tall guy, stubble, sneakers under sweatpants: "I'm actually very optimistic by nature, and I don't want to be cynical either, but these times do something to me. Take the situation with farmers and nitrogen. It's super annoying that they have to give in, but art has been squeezed for thirty years.' What he is trying to say is that the arts have long been stuck with cabinets that think that a DVD is about the same as a concert.

That statement about the DVD, what does that say about our times?

'That everything has been liberalized, that anyway. Composer and columnist Willem Pijper wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century that music in the Netherlands is meant to accompany psalms. So not to be enjoyed. In 2010, when drastic cuts were announced by the then Secretary of State for Culture, I received the Dutch Music Prize that same month, from the hands of the same Halbe Zijlstra. At the time, the organization was still very afraid that I would say something about it to the public, haha.

Another thing is that everything revolves around "I". At the conservatory, for example, the emphasis is very much on entrepeneurship. Already in the first year, students are taught commercial thinking. That is also smart, but not right at the start. Then you have to study especially scales. Then again, some styles are and will remain niche. That's good. Not everything has to be sexy.'

Strange times, then. But fortunately there is Splendor. His Splendor, the former bathhouse on Amsterdam's Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat, on loan to 50 musicians since 2008. To study, compose and try out. For where else can you see Ukrainian war refugees behind the piano or become acquainted with The Wittgenstein Project, based on the work by a pianist who lost his right hand in World War I?

It makes up for a lot. A collective full of energy and meaning, though the chinks to the indifferent outside world can't quite be closed.

Says Ties, "Five years ago I had my last treatment, but I notice that since then I have been much more receptive to these kinds of feelings and thoughts.

In 2015, the musician was on vacation when he suddenly experienced chest pain. A heart attack, he thought, but at home it turned out to be Hodgkin's. "I still asked my doctor if it would hurt to postpone the chemo for a week so I could finish my concert series. Because in the mean time he was still artistically processing the disaster that befell him before hodgkin: a kitchen accident that left his right hand partially paralyzed. Ties: "By now I can do everything again, but you can still see it. He holds out his hand. 'Look, I can't get my fingers stretched any more than this. And then I'm lucky. Most people that something like this happens to get clawed hands afterward. Maybe because I'm used to working with my hands, I've recovered better.'

Still, not very convenient, for a saxophonist.

'At first I was told I would probably never be able to play again. That was immediate crying, of course. But in the face of adversity my reflex is always: look at what is still possible. However small, there is always a line I can pull myself up by.

Where do you get that ausdauer from?

'I don't know. I already had it as a child. I'm just a pusher, I'm afraid. Incidentally, that ausdauer often works against me, too. To my family I can sometimes be quite absent-minded. Ailed, my wife, sometimes gets annoyed. And so do my son Saul (13) and daughter Alicia (9). I notice during that period that they go to Ailed with everything.'

Because you are there, but you are not there.

'That's what it comes down to, yes. Everything has to give way. I also see it in all the musicians here in Splendor. They are also very monomaniacal about their own project. And once a project is finished, then suddenly I am very much there.

And then everyone has to like it...

Laughs: 'Yes exactly, then suddenly I start asking very diligently about the cello lessons that I haven't asked about for three months. Then I see them rolling their eyes: here we go again!'

Would you recommend the profession of music to your children?

'I really have a bit of a disturbed relationship with my son regarding music. He plays jazz piano and is in the young talent class at the Amsterdam Music School. For his transition exam at the Bimhuis, he was extremely nervous. You think: why are you doing this to yourself? But yes, I think he does that a bit for me as well. Because he likes korfball a lot more. I also notice it when I ask him if he's coming to the North Sea Jazz Festival. I can see he doesn't feel like it, but then he hesitates anyway. I have to be careful not to burden him too much with my enthusiasm.'

I listened to your music and didn't even know this kind of music existed.

'Oh, that's nice, because I started making it because I couldn't find it myself either. It's just how I see music. My mother played Robert Long on Sundays, then Joe Cocker or Handel's Water Music, then Louis Andriessen again. As a twelve-year-old, I didn't even know these were different styles! I now try to get my students (Mellema is a saxophone professor at the Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Tilburg, ed.) to look at music in the same way, that there are infinite possibilities.'

Speaking of infinite possibilities: you're 46. What do you still want to achieve?

'When I got sick in 2015, I realized that I've actually done everything I wanted to do. I have worked with orchestras, toured internationally with my saxophone quartet and recorded pieces that I know are considered the standard worldwide. For example, the piece XAS by Iannis Xenakis, made for saxophone quartet - nobody can record it as well as we did and nobody is going to in the next twenty years.

The thought that I have already done everything frees my mind. But I got sick again in the summer of 2017. The same cancer. The first time I thought: okay, 96% survive and prtechnically I can still get something out of this. But that second time really hit me hard. A stem cell transplant and six weeks in an isolation cell were just super tough. For the first time in my life I gave up a little. But precisely because I did that, I made room for new thoughts. Then percussionist Barry Jurjus and I started to form the duo PEAX.'

A bit of a strong medicine, but that's what being sick can bring.

'Physically, of course, I had to give in. I always had an iron stomach, could throw anything in. That's not possible anymore, I can't drink as much. I also got a slower staccato, so I can't do that ttt on the saxophone anymore. I found a trick for that. I do tktktk now. But sure, I could never have made that CD with PEAX without the two cancers.'

Ties Mellema was born in 1976 in Tholen, Zeeland, where his parents had a medical practice. They had the view that education involves three things: sailing, ballroom dancing and music lessons. Because Ties had asthma, his father thought it would be good to choose a wind instrument. Thus, in the dead of the Candy Dulfer era, eight-year-old Ties came in contact with the saxophone. Ties diligently practices half an hour every day and turns out to have talent. Although he says he was a huge pusher even then. My musical talent is no more than average, but I do have an enormous love of music: if I want to learn to play that one etude, I will play it.'

The music serves another purpose. Ties is less socially adept and is bullied at school; music also provided a way out. At grammar school he was introduced to the work of the influential jazz saxophonist and composer Michael Brecker. (For those who do not know Michael Brecker: he played on as many as a thousand records, including the song "Your Latest Trick" by The Dire Straits; you can hear the saxophone solo in your head now). "That felt like a revelation. He went to a high school in America for a year where his subjects were symphony orchestra, concert band and big band. The thought of making music his profession does not occur to him. Only when a fellow student thinks Mellema is a musician does he realize: He is a musician - rudimentary, perhaps, and still developing, but unmistakable. In 2010 Mellema received the Dutch Music Prize from the Performing Arts Fund.

And so, thirty years later, he is doing what he has always done: making music that does not fit into any pigeonhole, with influences from every conceivable corner, of which his latest project PEAX is a sublimation. Ties: "We take inspiration from avant-garde, from techno, from James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Louis Andriessen, Bach, Fauré - everything.

THE BASS SAXOPHONE

Especially for Ties, the National Musical Instruments Fund purchased a bass saxophone early this year. Ties requested this in order to be able to play bass lines in his ensembles and compositions without the help of synthesizers. The bass saxophone comes from builder Benedikt Eppelsheim in Munich, who made the instrument entirely by hand. The neck is not standard, the valves are positioned differently and the course of the tube is also different. Ties wanted this very instrument because of the sound which is tuned a third lower than a baritone saxophone, but mainly because the tube is so much larger - which you hear in the sound. The instrument, which weighs more than 10 kilo’s, will soon be adapted to Mellema's hands by the Amsterdam saxophone atelier Saxomania.