Spotlighting the Harmonica

Thank you for participating in our Jazz Appreciation Month Listener Poll…today we celebrate the harmonica and Hendrik Meurkens.

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Hendrik Meurkens was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1957 – half a world away from the jazz epicenter of New York City. But his Dutch father and German mother played all kinds of  jazz on their home phonograph and they especially loved Brazilian music. The young Meurkens took piano lessons  and played drums in his basement but at 16 he discovered the vibraphone – an instrument he considered to be “a marriage between the piano and drums.” At 19, he heard harmonica player Toots Thieleman for the first time and was so inspired that he went out and bought himself a chromatic harmonica the very next day. The rest, as they say, is history – jazz history.

Meurkens came to the United States to attend the Berklee College of Music and then moved to Rio in the early 1980s to immerse himself in Brazilian culture. He returned to Germany in 1983, where he became a well-respected studio musician and played tours and clubs as both leader and sideman. All the while, he was teaching himself the harmonica, even transcribing Charlie Parker saxophone solos and converting them to harmonica. In 1983, he won first prize from the German Phono Academy for Jazz , recorded with the Danish Radio Orchestra and was dubbed the “new jazz harmonica voice.”

A recording deal eventually brought him to New York City, where he has lived ever since. During his successful career he has performed with Charlie Byrd, Jimmy Cobb, Monty Alexander, Anat Cohen, Olivia Newton John, Herbie Mann and Paquito D’Rivera, who became a close personal friend. He broke through on the American jazz charts in 1992 with his release “Clear of Clouds,” and, later, “A View from Manhattan.” More recently he released “Amazon River,” which he calls his best work and “the ultimate statement about me and my music.” It is a love song of sorts to Brazil, covering all aspects of Brazilian music.

To Meurkens, music is about purity, transcending politics and most other facets of contemporary life. “Music is just music,” said the German artist. “ When a bird sings, he doesn’t want to change the world. I feel my obligation is to create something of real beauty. There’s no greater statement than that.”