Thijs van Otterloo Group

Thijs van Otterloo is the youngest of three sons of the late Rogier van Otterloo, the famous Dutch composer and conductor, who died in 1988. Thijs seemed to have very musical ears and perfect pitch, and he started playing the saxophone and writing his own material at the age of twelve.
Later on, he started conducting his own bigband ('On The Move Jazz Orchestra'), and he got many assignments, both as a composer and arranger.
Thijs graduated at the conservatory in 1999, on Saxophone and Composition, and did a lot of writing for a.o. the Metropole Orchestra and the Royal Dutch Air Force Orchestra. Many years later, in 2003, he founded his own group; having a wide classical harmonic background, complemented with a very funk-influenced timing, and inspired by great jazz soloists like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, John Coltrane and Eef Alberts, and with the best possible fellow musicians, he was finally able to perform his own compositions, which had become quite numerous over the years. In 2007, MILES AWAY is his debut album, and definitely a start of many -good- things to come! show native description