Ilja Reijngoud - Tornare a Sud (2023)

After his cum laude graduation at the Conservatory of Amsterdam in 1996, Ilja taught the trombone there. In 1997 he was the second Dutch student so far to receive the American Degree ‘Master of Music.’ Ilja is permanent member of The Jazz orchestra of the Concertgebouw, The Cubop City Big Band, Lucas van Merwijk Music Machine, Masja Bijlsma Quintet and many other well-known Dutch groups. He was part of the most influencial bands in The Netherlands, such as Nueva Manteca, Pierre Courbois nonet and sextet, Michiel Braam XYZ Son band, The Jasper van ‘t Hof Quartet, and the popular hardbop group The Houdini’s. Apart from arranging for the orchestra, Ilja was already four times the featured soloist with the Metropole Orchestra.

As recognised member of the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, Ilja is arranging a lot for the band, also conducting various projects, such as The Jazz Influencers.

Ilja is leading his own groups for the last 30 plus years. His quartet recorded five albums, with soloists such as Fay Claassen and Bart van Lier. His latest band is a duo, The Art of Two, with guitarist Ed Verhoeff, playing a particular program called The Dutch Real Book – a program with Jazz compositions of well know Dutch musicians.

Ilja worked and recorded with Bob Brookmeyer, Tom Harrell, Ivan Lins, James Morrison, Jim Beard, John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Toots Thielemans, Herbie Hancock, Kenny Werner, Ed Neumeister, Jimmy Bosch, Jim McNeely, Joshua Redman, Georgie Fame, Lester Bowie, Bill Holman, Dori Caymmi and many others.

In 1998 Ilja founded an impressive trombone department at the Rotterdam Conservatory (Codarts), together with Efe Erdem and Andy Hunter. From 2000 he is big band leader of the Codarts Jazz departement, and performed almost every year at the North Sea Jazz Festival with this student-band. Furthermore he is teacher arranging/composing.

Since 2018 Ilja is main subject teacher at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. Together with Bert Boeren and Martijn Sohier he leads the largest Jazz-trombone departement in Europe, with more than 25 students. Ilja is leader of one of the three Amsterdam conservatory bigbands, ensemble coach and composing teacher.

As composer and arranger the list of his commissioners is quite varied; they include the WDR bigband, the HR bigband, both orchestra’s of the Royal Dutch Marine and Airforce, the Metropole Orchestra and the Cubop City BigBand. Soloists like Branford Marsalis, All Jarreau, Randy Brecker, Toots Thielemans, Jorgen van Rijen, Bart van Lier, Conrad Herwig, Branimir Slokar and Ben van Dijk played his music in recent years.