Caravan II Julian Schneemann

• 1 Timon of Turkey 04:22
• 2 Nda Manguluka 03:57
• 3 Banke Bahaarein 05:38
• 4 The Guardian of Jasmin 07:17
• 5 Ode to Tomorrow 02:04
• 6 Program 98 03:39
• 7 Zindagi 05:41
• 8 Babel 03:37
• 9 Air in D 06:48
• 10 Tuyeni 03:37
• 11 Day by Day 02:42
• Total Runtime 49:22

Info for Caravan II

Caravan II is the new album by Julian Schneemann and Friends from Just Listen. It features 11 compositions that travel through the worlds of classical, jazz and folk music. With 3 special singers with roots in Syria, Namibia, and India.

The album connects worlds from East to West and from classical music to jazz and folk. Together with the Syrian oud virtuoso Jawa Manla, violin phenomenon Emmy Storms and percussion wizard Jeroen Batterink, pianist/composer Julian Schneemann sets out on a journey, ignoring borders altogether. Expect a breathtaking musical experience, in which you will hear Arabic and Irish sounds, organically blended with European classical music and jazz. And with all these influences, in the end Caravan tells a single story, as if it were an appeal for the power of diversity.

For Caravan II, we are joined by three amazing singers. Madhu Lalbahadoersing has Indian-Surinamese roots, Shishani Vranckx Namibian and Wasim Arslan Syrian. They each have a totally different background and voice, but all three possess a great musicality and the ability to take you to their own, other world. Together with them, I worked on new music. The big challenge here was: how do you give each of us the opportunity to be him or herself, while at the same time bringing the group together as one?

On the album, all three singers have their own song, but in later tracks they come together more and more. Lyrics were written by them, in Hindi, Oshiwambo and Arabic, and the collaboration inspired me to write music that I would never have written without their influence. For all of us, this was a unique and enriching experience and I think the album is at least a beautiful document of our quest together!

The album was recorded live with an audience because for us, it was more important to record the energy of the music than to strive for perfection. You can hear all our beauty but also our vulnerabilities, also because of the amazing work by recording engineer Jared Sacks. The thing we tried in our music, he did with sound: by carefully placing us and the microphones in the room, he created space for all our sounds and colors to not be in each other’s way, but instead support each other.

Julian Schneemann, piano

Julian Schneemann
was raised by classical musicians, educated by jazz masters and surrounded by popular culture. Working with musicians from all over the globe, he learned from all kinds of cultures, like Arabic, African, South American and Indian. All these influences have been formative for his musical identity and in his imaginative piano playing and composing, Julian likes to exploit this diversity. His ambition in music is to unite and connect different genres, cultures and people.

In 2011, Julian won the composition prize “Op weg naar het Nieuwjaarsconcert”. He studied jazz piano at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2015, and in that same year released his debut album Roundabout. The album, described by Allaboutjazz.com as “An integral, coherent artistic statement” brought the worlds of classical, jazz and pop music together into a single story, and was internationally well-acclaimed. In 2016, Julian released the album FLY with the ensemble Ikarai, which tells the story of Icarus in sound. FLY was described as “A journey I can recommend to anyone” by Dutch TV-host Tijl Beckand.

Besides his activities as a pianist and composer in his own groups, Julian is also working as a pianist, keyboard player, arranger and composer for other bands and ensembles. He has played piano and keyboards with pop artists such as GOSTO and Angelo Boltini. He worked for among others the Netherlands Wind Ensemble (NBE), FUSE and Amsterdam Sinfonietta, for whom he wrote countless arrangements in different styles, ranging from classical, to world music and pop. His arrangement of Michael Nyman’s Knowing The Ropes was described by Nyman himself as “One of the best-ever arrangements of my music“.

Several of his compositions were played by the NBE at their famous annual New Year’s Concerts, broadcasted live on TV from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Important projects with the NBE include Fearful Symmetries, for which Julian made a new version of the great piece by John Adams, Rameau & the Greeks, his unique program in which he brought together and arranged music of the baroque composer with traditional music from Crete, and in 2020 The Unknown Chaplin, premiering two new compositions he made for films by the legendary comedian. In 2018 Julian received the Grachtenfestival composition prize and the famous Dutch composer Theo Loevendie described him as “A truly gifted composer and pianist who adopts elements from pop, jazz and classical music in his own authentic and convincing way.”

Currently, Julian’s main focus is on his project Caravan: A journey through the worlds of classical, jazz and folk. Since the start of the project in 2017, the group has played at the great stages in the Netherlands, like the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Paradiso, De Doelen and the Bimhuis, and festivals like the Grachtenfestival and November Music. The group frequently plays live on national TV, on the show Podium Witteman among others, and their music is often played on radio. Their debut album Caravan was well-acclaimed and described as “World fusion at it’s best – melancholic, uplifting, adventurous, exciting, and above all breathtakingly beautiful“. In 2019, three great young singers with Indian, Namibian and Syrian roots were invited into the ‘Caravan’ for the project Ode to Tomorrow and the group released their second album, Caravan II: “If possible even more subtle and more sublime than the first!“. Their Podium Witteman TV performance was chosen as one of the highlights of the year. In 2019 Caravan also premiered their children theatre show, a collaboration with Oorkaan. In this way already thousands of children in the Netherlands got in touch with their music.

This album contains no booklet.