‘Amity’ is the first album released by the Rotterdam-based, yet international Jadi Peperzak Quartet. Guitarist and namesake Jadi Peperzak has a playing style that appears to be as influenced by traditional jazz guitar as it is by more rock-oriented players, especially when it comes to the subtle rough edge to his rhythm guitar playing.

“I recorded the album with a Fender Deluxe Reverb, and I turned that thing up to seven or eight, that’s really what it is”, Peperzak smiles. “Honestly, that has been a childhood dream for me. When are you ever allowed to turn your amp all the way up? And I started playing influenced by Hendrix, like most guitarists. I also own a Kemper. In fact, I recently used it for the first time in years. It’s okay for a pop setting, but when you’re playing jazz, you really need to have that ‘oomph’ behind you.

Those woody guitar sounds are appropriate for jazz, but I have to say that I recently started playing with a different sound. Lately, I have been playing with an Electro-Harmonix POG, which has an attack-decay on it. Kurt Rosenwinkel does a lot with that as well. That does have a tendency to go at the expense of those woody guitar tones. To be completely honest with you, I’m still trying to find the right balance in that.”

Adjacent Classrooms

“As a guitarist, I went through just about every phase you can imagine. Every single one of the big guys is someone I have idolized and studied extensively. Through the years, I have played a lot of funk music, and there was even a time when I was clapping along to Slipknot songs at home. Really, I have done a lot of different things, and I enjoyed all of it.

Genuinely, I think it’s a good thing if you teach yourself how to play a plethora of different styles. The thing with many jazz guitarists – and I don’t mean this as a way of blowing my own trumpet or something – is that their playing is often is a little bit too neat. Not always, but a lot of jazz players play in a way that lacks balls.

I remember Ed Verhoeff telling me that he and Menno Gootjes used to teach in adjacent classrooms. Since Ed worked for the jazz department, a lot of his students were yearning for the ‘oomph’ they would hear from the adjacent classroom. Meanwhile, Menno wanted to have more of the beautiful notes he heard from Ed’s classroom. And I think it’s a cool thing if you can do both. Like John Scofield does, or Kurt Rosenwinkel, or Pat Metheny: balls!

Having said that: my favorite Scofield is Scofield playing ballads. Or if he plays sweetly. No one can touch his strings as sweetly as he does, whilst still crossing the line secretly at times. He always makes me feel a lot. I think I have seen him five or six times in the past four years, and it was something new and fresh.

Every time, he does something new with his guitar, or he pulls a trick out of his pocket of which I didn’t even know he could do it, or at least I’ve never heard him do it before. He’ll do that quickly, and I feel like he never does it again.”

All the Steps in One Go

“I think a lot of people who enjoy metal could sincerely like jazz. But if you don’t have a context, and you immediately move from your metal band to John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’, there are just so many steps you have missed along the way. And the thing is, you don’t actually need to go through all those steps in one go.

Charles Altura, who used to play guitar with Chick Corea, has played a bunch of things that are quite heavy. Tigran Hamasyan also has done some insane things. His first album (‘World Passion’, 2006) has a bunch of things that are so awesome. He’s from Armenia, so he is accustomed to odd time signatures, but there are also moments when metal riffs enter the scene. And then suddenly, it’s free jazz. And that’s his first album! He was 21 or something when he recorded that!

Fortunately, the conservatory in Rotterdam stimulates making your own music, because I feel there are too many institutes that hang on to traditions far too much. It pisses me off sometimes. Are they truly educating hundreds of people to play in small cafés for the rest of their lives? Because there aren’t any booking agents interested in how well someone can play rhythm changes these days.

That is something I study a lot myself as well, because it’s something I want to be good at, but I first of all, no one will ever be able to play like Charlie Parker. I certainly won’t. But the thing is: he played the way he did, because it was something very new for the era, and because he felt that way. I think that if he was still alive today, or at least in the nineties, it would probably offend him that people would still resort to playing exactly like he did all those years ago.”

Songs from the Pre-War Era

“My old guitar teacher in Nijmegen once told me: you should take the time to listen to Steely Dan sometime, I think you will enjoy it. That’s what I did, and I immediately fell in love with it. That is what ended up being my gateway drug to jazz music. Because I do think that you need something that’s a little closer to rock or pop music before you can dive head-first into jazz music. I definitely needed that, at least.

When I got into Steely Dan, I also started getting into what all these session players were doing as well. That struck a chord in me and made me think: that’s what I want to do, so I will have to study jazz. So that’s what I did, and then I suddenly had to spend most of my days playing loads of songs from the pre-war era. To be frank, that was completely different than what I imagined a jazz study would be.

One of the first weeks there, I even had an appointment with Age Kat (prolific Dutch session guitarist and teacher at the Rotterdam Conservatory), agreeing that I would finish the year, and I would transfer to the pop department for the second year. However, sometime near the end of my first years, I ended up falling in love with that style of music anyway, and I turned into a massive jazz autist. For years, I studied the style as hard as I possibly could.”

A Barrier to Cross

“We recorded ‘Amity’ in December of 2024. And I’ll be honest with you: it took some time before I made my peace with it. There really was a barrier I had to cross, because it had been recorded so long ago, and I play quite differently these days. Also, I think that we sound better as a band. Because the guys also didn’t stop progressing in the intervening year and a half. Plus, the pieces simply sound better, because we have been playing them for longer.

That’s what was going through my head: will people even think it’s cool anymore? Because the way I experience it, this is the way a lot of people will hear me play for the first time, and what they will hear is a version of us that was two years old by the time the album finally got released. It’s a very strange idea, really. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter that much ultimately.

In the meantime, I have had a few meetings with labels, and for some of them, things looked good for a little while, but then in the end, it turned out to be the same old story again, and that also delayed things significantly. At some point, I had completely lost the motivation to even release the album. I was very insecure about it. That’s why I haven’t really felt that push to release the album immediately in the beginning.

However, when I hear the album now, I think it’s actually quite cool. I have completely turned around on it. The first time I listened to the results, I wasn’t happy with them at all. But when I hear it now, I realize: if this was somebody else’s record, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot.”

Free to Try Out New Things

“As a quartet, we have been playing together for about two or three years before we went into the studio to record ‘Amity’, and through all of those years, we have consistently adjusted and honed the material. One thing I do sometimes forget is that a lot of the people you play your music to has never heard your music before. So even though we play things significantly differently compared to how we did it a few years ago, they don’t have anything to compare it to, and might like it immediately.

We have maintained a stable line-up through the years, with the exception of our pianist Kasyfi Kalyasyena, who moved back to Indonesia last year, so we have been playing with a new pianist, Daniel Bulatkin, from Czechia. Having this line-up is very pleasant, because all of us feel very free to try out new things. Live as well. Because we are good friends.

Playing with good friends is the thing I enjoy most, personally. I simply dare to play a little more loosely with these guys. If I play in a different setting, I would have the feeling that I should do something impressive. But with the quartet, we all have a mindset of: whatever happens, happens.”

In a Cupboard for About Twenty Years

“My guitar is a Gibson Howard Roberts. It’s slightly thicker than a 335, but nowhere near as large as one of those Jim Hall guitars. It’s kind of a funny story how I got by that guitar. It was specifically this guitar that I wanted, because Ronald Schmitz, who was one of my teachers at the conservatory, along with Ed Verhoeff, has this exact model. In fact, he has two of them, both of them black. So I simply wanted one for myself as well.

The only guitar exactly like that we could find was available somewhere in Belgium, or at least nearby enough that we could actually pick them up. So we drove all the way there, and it turns out the guitar was owned by a man who once bought it despite the fact that he doesn’t actually play guitar at all. He wasn’t even a rich guy or anything like that, but he just thought the instrument looked great. After that, it was in a cupboard for about twenty years. Surprisingly, I have never had to adjust it.

Between the guitar and the amp, I always have my compressor on. And my DOD Delay is almost always on as well. In addition, I have a J. Rockett The Dude overdrive pedal, and I use that a lot as well. That pedal is on at least once for every show.”