Last fall saw the release of A Love Unveiled by Jan van Duikeren and Marcel Veenendaal, which turned out to be as wondrous as it was unexpected. The album has a subdued and melancholic feel, and clearly comes from the heart. The love for jazz ballads that they’ve revealed on this release wasn’t especially surprising to fans of Van Duikeren. The acclaimed trumpeter has been dazzling people within the jazz circuit for a fair few years now, and has worked with the likes of the Metropole Orkest and New Cool Collective, among others. Followers of Veenendaal, the frontman of Dutch rock act DI-RECT, may have been slightly more perplexed by this stylistic excursion – even though DI-RECT indirectly led to this special project. Van Duikeren sometimes supports the band during live performances as it happens, and knows the vocal versatility of Veenendaal better than anyone. After he enlisted the singer for his Short Stories project (2021), the duo decided to both record a complete album together with some of the best jazz musicians around, such as drummer John Engels, and to start performing live – luckily for us.
