Medical student Daan Kluwer wins 10,000 euros to record his own jazz album

Saxophonist and medical student Daan Kluwer won the music competition Keep an Eye The Records in January. With the prize money of 10,000 euros, he will record a new album. His debut album is released this week and, in the meantime, he is also completing a master’s degree in Medicine.

When medical student Daan Kluwer is on stage and really in the zone, it is as if he is detached from the world. “At such a moment, you switch off your thoughts a little. You immerse yourself in the music and instinctively respond to what is happening around you.”

“That is the ultimate feeling I am always searching for”, Kluwer says. “Entering that trance-like state in which thoughts do not keep racing through your mind. You are not thinking about what people think of you, or whether it sounds good. You are simply playing in the moment.”

He experienced that same feeling in January when he performed his music with his band before a jury at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht. He had reached the final of the music competition Keep an Eye The Records, which aims to encourage young jazz musicians. He was one of three winners, selected from one hundred and forty entries. With the prize money, 10,000 euros, he will enter the studio this year to record his second album.

Music and medicine

Although winning the competition is an important step in Kluwer’s musical career, it is not the only thing that occupies his daily life. Kluwer completed his bachelor’s degree in Medicine and is currently working on his master’s in the same field.

After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 2019, Kluwer enrolled at Codarts Rotterdam, where he studied jazz at the conservatoire. He graduated cum laude in 2023, after which he decided to continue in medicine after all.

However, his music will never completely fade into the background. “Of course I have to make choices”, Kluwer explains. “For example, I am now more selective about the performances I accept. I cannot do everything I might once have done, simply because there is no longer enough time. After all, it is not my intention to complete my degree half-heartedly.”

An honour

It was not the first time the saxophonist had taken part in The Records, but it was the first time he had won.

“Just being there is already an honour”, Kluwer says, “but it is an even greater honour if you are invited to perform a second time.” The Records is regarded as a prestigious competition within the jazz world, one that can help winning bands move forward in their careers.

According to Kluwer, he approached it fairly relaxed. “I thought: let’s just enjoy playing together as a band. You have your music, your band, your sound, and then it is up to the jury to decide what they think of it.”

Irreplaceable

Thanks to the prize money, Kluwer and his band, which bears his name, will return to the studio this year to record an album. Return, because his first album is released on February 27th. He had already been working on it before signing up for The Records. He financed this album partly with subsidies and partly with his own money.

The album is released under his own name, as is often the case in the jazz world. Kluwer says: “It may be my name and I wrote the music, but we truly are a band. The music sounds the way it does because of the people in it, and they cannot simply be replaced by someone else.”

In addition to Kluwer on saxophone, his band consists of a guitarist, a double bassist, a drummer and a musician who plays piano and synthesiser.

The Life of Billy

He drew inspiration for his debut album from Slaughterhouse-Five, a 1969 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. Kluwer describes himself as a real sci-fi enthusiast and says he is particularly inspired creatively by books. “When I read”, he says, “I think about what the story, or a specific character, would sound like if it were a song.”

Slaughterhouse-Five is about a man named Billy who becomes unstuck in time and relives his life in a non-chronological order. The sci-fi elements from the book can be heard in Kluwer’s somewhat electronic take on jazz music. And, he explains: “Because this book was the first seed from which my album grew, I named it The Life of Billy as a tribute.”

His favourite track on the album is Lost in Transmission, a ballad. Kluwer describes the song as follows: “The large atmospheric soundscape that slowly develops, with an almost hip-hop-like, very minimalist drum groove underneath.”

Switching gears

Kluwer is already thinking about his next album. “But because we only recently won The Records, and because our first record has not even been released yet, we need a moment to switch gears”, he says.

He does not yet fully know which direction he wants to take. “To what extent do I want to continue in the same direction as our first record? And to what extent do I want to do something different or something new? That is what I am very much focused on at the moment.”