After more than ten years of being active as sideman in or co-leader of the Yuri Honing trio, Michiel Borstlap trio and sextet, White House, Lydia van Dam Group and Tony Overwater, drummer Joost Lijbaart has now formed his own band. He scouts his passion with this band; the more free jazz of the sixties, from just before the switch many musicians made to electronics. He most particularly loses himself in the characteristic transition period of that time, when certain form structures, the experimenting with different rhythms and the starting point of sound and melody without fixed schemes were handled more freely. Therefore he chose compositions by free birds like Ornette Coleman, Dave Holland, Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, in which particularly the horn and rhythm sections are very contrasting. Lijbaart's Group of Friends consists of engrained sax players Yuri Honing and Benjamin Herman, who where with Lijbaart in the group of Michiel Borstlap and are able to meet each other excellently in intense expressive sounds. The bass of Norwegian Matts Eilertsen is the standard in this playing.
