Martijn van Iterson graduated cum laude from the conservatory in 1993 as a student of Wim Overgaauw, whose guitar he still plays today. In 2004 Van Iterson won the Bird Award at the North Sea Jazz Festival 2004 and was presented with the prize by Pat Metheny. He played with, among others, Lee Konitz, Toots Thielemans, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Piet Noordijk and released the CDs It's Happening and The
… Whole Bunch for Streetwise. Like its predecessor, the accompaniment on Streetwise consists of Karel Boehlee on piano, Frans van Geest on bass and Martijn Vink on drums. Van Iterson is especially popular in America where smooth jazz reigns. It would be an insult to call his music smooth jazz, it has too much depth for that, but especially in his warm round guitar sound there are similarities. Van Iterson takes the listener through his cast-iron compositions from soul jazz where the groove is paramount to moments of great splendor. (AD)more
