An important part of the concept for Stranded was van Dijk’s exploration of open structures. She explains, “I needed a group of open-minded musicians that would be into collaborating and improvising quite freely. There’s a lot of space for the musicians to play around with and I needed musicians who would be comfortable with that, because I really wanted to create an environment for these artists to freely reveal themselves. I tried to write a balance of open structures and also a few compositions with more defined forms and information. In my work I always draw from different musical genres, as I think many from my generation of musicians do, and I utilize collaboration and improvisation as a way to connect players and ideas.”
Van Dijk also needed an open mind, and as the album title, Stranded, hints at, the artist originally planned to spend a year to start her PhD in composition in Australia followed by travels to New York and Europe, and found herself marooned in subtropical Brisbane, the third city of Australia, during the Covid-19 Global Pandemic. Much of this music was composed and conceptualized during this time as part of her PhD, focused on collaborative practices and abstract composition techniques.
Commissioned by the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2020 as the Festival’s annual commission, van Dijk’s concept for Stranded developed over the following two years until its delayed premiere at the Festival in 2022. During this time van Dijk had to use her imagination to remember and feel some semblance of the joy of performing with her friends and collaborators, and connecting with each other and the audience. Van Dijk elaborated, “with this music I tried to stay as close as possible to what it feels like to be part of a live performance: the album was recorded in a live setting and produced to give listeners the sensation of sitting on stage, right there, with us.”
In terms of concept for the music and compositions, composing for this specific ensemble came to be central to Stranded. The musicians were chosen specifically for their musical personalities. Van Dijk said of this factor, “their personalities were a big influence on the whole process, not only during the performances, but during the composing process I was already imagining how the musicians would play the pieces and what that would sound like.”
A versatile musician, van Dijk has performed and toured with many ensembles; European Jazz Orchestra, Jazzmania Big Band, Konrad Koselleck Big Band, New Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra, as well as numerous smaller groups. Prior to moving to Australia in 2019, van Dijk worked as a research assistant at the Antwerp Royal Conservatoire (Belgium) and was part of the saxophone faculty at the Institut fur Music in Osnabrück, Germany for several years. Additionally, she taught workshops and classes at Codarts Rotterdam, Groningen Conservatory, Royal conservatory the Hague and Amsterdam Conservatory.
Perhaps pianist/arranger Gil Goldstein puts it best when describing van Dijk’s music (specifically The Stereography Project), “van Dijk’s writing has an organic quality; balanced and seems to find ratios and combinations that are based in nature. I find her music very intuitive and feel that she has great honesty. This record will be just another step in a long career of composing.”
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