Peter-Vincent Schuld

Does there always have to be a special reason to put someone in the spotlight or to commemorate them?
I don’t think so.
Do you always have to list someone’s entire doings so that it becomes a belated obituary?
Don’t think so either.

So where is this story going? Maybe to nowhere. Maybe it’s just a piece.
After all, there are people who are so special that they ask to be
remembered after their death. Especially if they are or were special musicians, composers or artists.

“Toots” Thielemans was such a virtuoso. Born Jean Baptiste Frédéric Isidor Thielemans in the working-class district of Marolles in Brussels.
A neighborhood where once upon a time in many a pub, pints and their drinkers went hand in hand until the early hours of the morning.
It is not for nothing that the Brussels dialect, which was partly lost due to the Frenchification, is only spoken by the original inhabitants of Brussels,
also called “Marols”.

The soft timbre of the Brussels dialect seems to be somehow ingrained in the genetics of the musical playing with Toots’ harmonica. It is completely pointless to list all of Toots’ musical works here. Not that I don’t know them, but what’s the point
of mentioning only empty titles, if you don’t immediately hear the corresponding sounds.

I’d better try to describe a feeling that creeps up on me when the music of Toots Thielemans creeps up.
Toots was an emotional person. If you don’t hear this in his music, it’s quite possible that your ears
resemble a clogged sewer. So I did hear it, and maybe it’s just that, in combination with the simplicity,
that makes me lyrical about his music playing to this day.

You won’t find Elvis Presley or Frans Bauer in my CD collection. But Toots can certainly be found and can be found often.
His musical melancholy is perhaps identical to mine. Melancholy is perhaps the fondest feeling
that makes special moments of yesteryear remain stuck in your soul.

Well then, one then….Circle of Smiles, composed by Jurre Haanstra, performed with passion and personal
input like no one can, by Toots Thielemans. It may not mean anything to you right away? Let me make it a little easier, it’s the title music that belongs to the legendary police series Baantjer,
which is set in a naughty and cynical Amsterdam.
Based on the books of Appie Baantje, former policeman and detective in the light of morality-tinted Mokum.

Just like so many other works that Toots performed, it is again that melancholy that you hear. I heard and saw Toots Thielemans
play at his favorite Antwerp music festival Jazz Middelheim. Since 1996 he has been patron of this annual event.
At the festival, he played the stars from heaven in all calmness and let them whirl over the audience. I was there in front of the newspaper to take
pictures of Toots, but sometimes I didn’t feel like operating the camera because the music interested me even more. Still, I couldn’t resist making
some beautiful images.

Circle of Smiles, the ever-recurring intro by Baantjer. Just like so much of the music played by Toots, you keep humming them, especially when your brain is wandering a bit during an evening walk through any big city. Whether I was walking in drizzly New York or rainy Antwerp at night, the sounds that played in my head reflected on the asphalt and the wet cobblestones around me.
Thoughts wandering to somewhere that no one can reach, contemplating in the open safe that I can close at any time and of which I only have the code. Jean “Toots” Thielemans, passed away 1.5 years ago, but remains one of the greatest musicians of all time and for me at least the greatest Belgian. Finally… Let the sounds continue to reverberate on the rainy street and let melancholy take possession of me.