Memories of Thomas ChapinIneke van Doorn, The Netherlands

In 1994 at the SJU-jazzfestival in Utrecht, The Netherlands, I heard Thomas Chapin for the first time. His playing impressed me a lot. My first impression was that although he was playing very free, energetic and anarchistic he was easy to follow and he never lost contact with his trio-members nor with the audience. After the concert I talked shortly with him and this was like his music: lively, open and with a lot of humour.

More than two years later, in December 1995, Marc van Vugt and I decided to ask Thomas to play as a featured guest with our group Vandoorn for our CD President for Life. This was more or less a spontaneous idea so we only called him three weeks before it should happen. At one way or the other it ‘clicked’ immediately. Thomas didn’t need to hear a tape of us first and because of the narrow time schedule he bought a plane ticket himself. A written down confirmation? Nothing of this was necessary. When I asked him later if he was always so full of trust towards other people, he answered that he always followed his intuition and that this always worked. I found this quite remarkable.

He flew to The Netherlands, we arranged the transfer and a hotel (we were busy in the studio ourselves) and the next day we picked him up for the recording. When I arrived at the hotel, Thomas was still eating breakfast and the waiter offered me a cup of tea. Thomas was wearing one of his hats and as I was also wearing a special one (I like to wear hats too), we first admired our hats. So that was our first ‘live’ conversation. Later on we started to work in the studio. He had no complaints about being tired. We worked hard from the very beginning and Thomas thought along with us very well. When we had doubts about whether or not doing another take he was the first to stand up and say: “Let’s do it!”. It was a very inspiring experience during which we also had a lot of fun.

In April 1996 we got to know each other better when he stayed with us for a week because of a couple of concerts with Vandoorn for the presentation of the new CD President for Life. I had a cold at that time and stayed home for two days. Thomas had just finished a tour with his trio in Europe and was full of (a lot of funny) stories about his experiences. I remember that he was even following me to the kitchen everytime I had to go there (to make tea or so) in order to be able to continue his story. Being away from home already a couple of weeks he was all the time telling me how much he missed his wife and his talking bird, and how much he wanted to go home. Later on it turned out that he had to stay even longer because of heavy snow storms in New York!

Although the music of Vandoorn differs a lot from the music he made with his trio this was not at all a problem for him. Whether he played free funk, or was musical director with Lionel Hampton, he could play without losing any of his character. I found that very intriguing.

After the concerts in 1996 we stayed in touch so in the beginning of 1997 I heard about the leukemia. This didn’t hold him back to offer, if he would be well enough, to play with Vandoorn as a special guest at the concert we did in the Knitting Factory during the New York Jazz Festival. I am still happy that that happened.

By that time he had already lost his hair because of the treatments. He regretted his hair a lot, but looked good anyway. He was in a good shape and had a lot of energy in spite of his illness. During the same tour, we met again in Toronto where Thomas played a vibrant duo-concert with Borah Bergman.

At the end of my tour with Vandoorn we met again in New York. He took me to the Isamu Noguchi Museum. We looked at the works and made some funny pictures. But we also sat down and he talked about his frustrations and anger because of his illness, he even showed me the hospital where his next treatment would take place. Later on that day we went for dinner with his wife Terri and my friend and fellow-musician Marc van Vugt. After that he showed us a couple of interesting record shops, we went to a bookshop and sat down to have tea and cakes. Till the middle of the night we were talking and making jokes, and he made the impression that he had an everlasting energy.

We said goodbye on the street late at night.

For me he’s a person who crossed my path and left a clear and indelible mark, because of his way of life, his love for music, his generosity towards fellow musicians, his humor and tremendous energy. For me he is not a saint, but a beautiful inspiring human being. I am very glad that I met him and played with him.