2013) — Niels Lan Doky
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Niels Lan Doky
The Summer in 1989 was particularly busy for Niels. He performed a number of prominent jazz festivals with an all-star trio with Gary Peacock on bass and Alex Riel on drums (Norwegian trumpeter Nils-Petter Molvær joined them as a guest at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway) and completed his remaining commitment for Storyville Records by recording not less than 2 CD albums and a VHS video (later released on DVD) in Copenhagen with this trio. During the trio’s performance at the Northsea Jazz Festival, Niels’ wife Valentine joined him but felt unwell after the concert and had to see a doctor and that’s when the couple found out that they were expecting twins, a boy and a girl. The twins, Ken Linh and Mai Lan were born in Paris at the beginning of the following year. Shortly after receiving these news, Niels was on a plane to New York to begin a new exciting chapter of his career, by recording his first album under his new contract with the prestigious Milestone label and with an incredible New York stellar cast with Randy Brecker, Bob Berg, John Scofield, and Adam Nussbaum. The great engineer James Farber recorded and mixed the album and Niels brother Chris Minh Doky had recently moved to New York and was the bassist on the date. The album was called “Dreams” and featured mainly Niels’s own original music.

The “Dreams” album came out great and received a lot of praise upon its release. It was made quite visible in the media and record stores in France thanks to the marketing director at Carrere, Milestone’s licensee/distributor in France, Stephane Papinot who did an excellent job promoting Niels. Stephane later became responsible for breaking Niels’ old schoolmate Diana Krall in France, the first territory she broke in, catapulted her into a career stateside that let into superstardom and record sales by the multi-millions). Stephane and Niels became close friends and managed to keep working together off and on as they both switched labels. Although they were both the same labels (Blue Note, Universal, etc) they weren’t always so at the same time.

For the US release of the album in early 1990 Niels’ did an entire week under his own name at what is arguably the most legendary jazz club in history, The Village Vanguard in New York. The gig took place in March 1990 less than a month after the birth of Niels’ twins in Paris. The gig featured an all-star quartet with Bill Evans on tenor and soprano saxophones, Gary Peacock on bass and Victor Lewis in drums. By this time the club’s original owner Max Gorden had passed and the club was now run by his widow Lorraine Gordon, who was quite a character with a strong life-long presence on the jazz scene. Before her marriage to Max, she was married for seven years to Alfred Lion, who founded the Blue Note record label with Francis Wolff. Lorraine was upset about Bill Evans bringing in his own reverb unit for his saxophone. She told Niels “Why does he need this echoplex, the Vanguard has the greatest acoustics in the world”, not leaving any room for discussion. The gig went well, but Niels’ manager at the time, Mary Ann Topper, was unhappy with Milestone’s promotional support of the Village Vanguard gig.

Not long after, Niels was already working on his next album for Milestone, called “Friendship” and was recorded partly in New York and partly in Copenhagen and featured all-stars casts from both cities including Niels’ closest associates at the time, including Randy Brecker, Bill Evans, Rick Margitza, John Abercrombie, Adam Nussbaum, his brother Chris Minh Doky, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Alex Riel, and Ulf Wakenius.

By the time the album came out in 1991, Niels was so much away from the US absorbed in parenthood in Paris that he was unavailable to promote his albums properly and frequently enough in the US. Let alone that fact that Niels’ manager felt that the promotional effort on the part of the label was unsatisfactory from the beginning, As a result, the sales didn’t reach a high enough level in spite of critical acclaim and a good impact in other territories, but those earnings were mainly absorbed by the label’s distributors and licensees and didn’t contribute noticeably to the bottom line at home in the US. Finally, Milestone decided to not renew Niels’ contract, which prompted Niels to begin a series of associations with various European record labels before eventually returning to Blue Note.

In the Summer of 1991, Niels did a solo piano concert at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York plus a tour of all the Canadian festivals with a quartet that included John Abercrombie on guitar, his brother Chris Minh Doky on bass and Adam Nussbaum on drums. The concert in Toronto was recorded and released as a live CD entitled “The Toronto Concert” on the French label Maracatu which was owned and operated by DAM, one of the biggest independent record distributors in France. This marked the beginning of a collaboration between Niels and the Paris-based label. The following year yielded yet another live recording this time recorded in Copenhagen in 1992, entitled “An Evening Of Standards” and featuring Bill Evans on tenor and soprano saxophones, Lars Danielsson on bass and Alvin Queen on drums. The latter even did some spontaneous and memorable spoken word narration during one of the songs. The third and final album was recorded in New York in 1993, entitled “Manhattan Portrait” and featuring a stellar cast with Gary Peacock on bass, Billy Hart on drums and the Grammy Award-winning engineer Jay Newland and the recording date took place at the legendary Power Station studios (later renamed Avatar Studios). As the contract with Maracatu was not exclusive, Niels also recorded a 1992 album for the Italian label Soul Note, the album was called “Paris By Night” and featured Randy Brecker on trumpet, Daniel Humair on drums and once again Chris Minh Doky on bass.

By this time, Niels and his brother Chris had developed a very active musical collaboration and after an extended period of having appeared on each others projects the now were on a quest to land a record deal for a joint project of theirs. But it was hard to motivate the labels, as Chris (5 ½ years younger than Niels) was not yet established at the time and it was easier for Niels to find recording opportunities under his own name alone. After several years of attempt, they were close to giving up but eventually, an opportunity arose in 1995 to record for EMI/Blue Note.

In the meantime, Niels had started to work as a producer for the Japanese label 3361 Black. Through the early 90s and into the mid-90s, the label’s owner, Hideharu Itoh, and his brilliant engineer Kimio Oikawa would come to Paris several times a year to record a handful of projects each time and with Niels as a producer and often performer also. The projects were very conceptual and this collaboration became a platform for Niels to develop a strong sense for concept albums, a passion for the same that he shares with many Japanese record producers. And from this point on Niels would also develop his skills as a record producer, a parallel career of his that would expand greatly up through the 90s and into the 00s.

Other memorable gigs in the early 90s include a Paris concert at the Auditorium Des Halles with a quartet with the great alto saxophonist and Miles Davis alumnus, Kenny Garrett and Chris Minh Doky on bass and Alvin Queen on drums.

Then there was a 1991 record date at Rainbow Studios in Oslo with Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith for his EMI/Blue Note album “Standards” which also yielded an extensive U.K. tour at the release of the album. Tommy was a member of Gary Burton’s group and through Gary, he had met Peter Shukat, the famous lawyer who worked for top artists like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis. Peter negotiated a great recording contract for Tommy and Niels joined Tommy’s quartet for the first recording and subsequent tour.

1991 was also the year that the great guitarist and bassist from Sweden, Ulf Wakenius and Lars Danielsson hired Niels as a producer for their New York album productions to be released on the German Bellaphon label and featuring Jack DeJohnette, David Liebman, John Scofield, Randy Brecker, Bill Evans and others. The Gulf War broke out as they were mixing the albums at Sound On Sound studios in Manhattan and the artists and engineers mixed a portion of the music while following the news on TV in parallel!

In 1992, Niels did a project in Copenhagen with Charlie Haden, John Scofield, and Daniel Humair and the New Music Orchestra directed by Michael Gibbs. And later Niels was asked to do a duo concert with Charlie Haden in Southern France. That year also yielded a concert at the Jazz Baltica Festival in Germany with an exciting all-star quintet featuring Joe Henderson, Palle Danielsson, Peter Erskine, and Ulf Wakenius. In 1993 Niels did a project with David Sanborn and the Danish Radio Big Band and wrote all the music himself. That year also yielded the first of several pan-European tours with a group called “The Quartet” and which featured bass icon Ray Brown, drummer Billy Hart, and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. The latter was later replaced by Ulf Wakenius on guitar. By the end of 1993, Niels signed a one off-deal with Columbia and release an album called “Misty Dawn” featuring an all-star Danish trio with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass and Alex Riel on drums. The title track went on to become one of Niels’ most famous compositions. It was used in a 1994 TV documentary series about HM The Queen of Denmark and life at the royal palace during the different seasons of the year. It was later also used in a Samsung TV commercial. The trio also did some occasional gigs in different countries. HM The Queen of Denmark also brought along a copy of the “Misty Dawn” CD along with a Danish B&O stereo system to play it on, to Nelson Mandela on her official state visit to South Africa in 1996.

In 1994 Niels did two live gigs at the New Morning in Geneva, Switzerland that were filmed at released as DVDs,” Bob Berg & The Niels Lan Doky Trio” and “Randy Brecker & The Niels Lan Doky Trio” the trio in both cases comprised Pierre Boussaguet on bass and Alvin Queen on drums. The DVDs were released on the German InAkustik label.

Come 1995 Niels meets Danish singer Cæcilie Norby who was part of the hugely successful Danish pop group called One Two. But she was versatile, she came from a classical background and always had a parallel jazz career although she had never released any solo album under her own name in any genre. One night Niels coincidentally heard her do a jazz gig of Nancy Wilson covers at a club in Copenhagen and was greatly surprised about the quality level that Cæcilie was delivering from the stage. Being a Nancy Wilson fan himself, this experience prompted Niels to start a dialogue with Cæcilie about a possible collaboration. Soon after they were involved in developing a solo debut album project together for Cæcilie as a lead artist and with Niels as the producer. Because of Cæcilie’s pop group One Two, she was exclusively signed to the major record label, EMI. However, as the EMI group owned the iconic jazz label, Blue Note, Cæcilie was allowed to record for them so Niels contacted the head of Blue Note in New York, Bruce Lundvall, and arranged for Cæcilie’s albums to be released on that label. It was quite a sensation as it was the first time that a Danish artist was to appear as a leader on such a historic and prominent jazz label (Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen has appeared on the label, but only as a sideman). Being used to the pop success of One Two, EMI didn’t expect much from Cæcilie’s jazz solo album debut. In turn, they were greatly surprised that the first album took off really fast upon its release in 1995. And not just in Denmark. In Japan, for instance, the album was released as an import at first but the demand grew so rapidly the Japanese EMI office couldn’t keep up with the demand and had to license the production parts and start to manufacture CDs themselves locally in Japan. Before long the sales of Cæcilie’s self-titled debut album reached Gold in Denmark. And the follow-up album “My Corner Of The Sky” was released the year after and also went Gold.

By now Niels had not only a very solid track record as a producer but also the reputation of being very meticulous and well-organized and always delivering his masters on time and within budget. Those were rare traits and record labels loved it and quite quickly Niels was overwhelmed with projects and offers as a producer, not just within jazz but also in pop and RnB and flying back and forth between recording studios in Copenhagen, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, Niels prioritized getting two Doky Brothers albums out on EMI/Blue Note and worked with the same team of key people as he had worked with on the Cæcilie Norby albums, including Mik Christensen and Nikolaj Foss in Copenhagen, Bruce Lundvall in New York and Hitoshi Namekata in Tokyo. The albums “Doky Brothers” and “Doky Brothers 2” came out in respectively 1996 and 1997 and were great successes and both sold Gold. The second album even reached the Top 10 pop charts in Denmark before it even came out, solely based on the advance sales resulting from the success of the previous album. Both albums featured a cornucopia of stellar guest performers including John Scofield, Randy and Michael Brecker, David Sanborn, Gino Vannelli, Al Jarreau, Terri Lyne Carrington, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Trilo Gurtu, Curtis Stigers and many more.

As a producer, Niels was a free agent and freelancing left and right but as a pianist and recording artists he was now exclusive to the EMI group and jazz history's perhaps most iconic labels, Blue Note. Niels was proud and excited to meet and work with the label's most legendary modern era CEO, Bruce Lundvall - a great man who was dearly beloved by all the musicians. When Niels joined the label, Bruce invited him to borrow his office when he was not there. He would say to Niels, "Make some phone calls, make yourself at home. You are a Blue Note recording artist now". Niels would drink coffee there and listen to music on Bruce’s absolutely incredible stereo system and look at the many interesting memorabilia on his wall, including a framed telegram from Miles Davis from way back when Bruce was president at Columbia Records. The telegram read something like "Dear Bruce, Congratulations on being appointed president of Columbia Records. If you ever need any advice on black music don't hesitate to call me." Niels later did an album with the CTI All-Stars "Live in Montreux" from 2009 which was mixed by legendary Blue Note engineer Rudy Van Gelder but never worked with him before.

Since marrying Valentine in 1989 and moving to Paris that same year, Niels had kept his midtown Manhattan apartment and used it as a base for his frequent returns to the city, approximately 6-7 times a year. However, by the end of 1997, Niels was spending the majority of his time in Europe and his brother the majority of his time in the US, so Niels decided to hand the lease over to his brother as he was already staying there whenever he was in town. This coincided with a tendency that had lingered for a while but had started to become more obvious than ever before by the end of the decade: The jazz scene in the US was slowly fading in parallel with the natural gradual passing of the old icons who had been headlining most of the clubs, concerts and festivals - all while the music industry was too slow and inefficient in developing enough new talents to take over in time. In Europe in contrast, the jazz scene was healthy and growing. In part helped by the extensive cultural government subsidy programs across the continent. Like Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and the Doky Brothers from Denmark, there were more and more European jazz artists with international impact, such as guitarist Ulf Wakenius from Sweden, trumpeter Till Brönner from Germany, violinist Didier Lockwood from France, Jan Garbarek from Norway, etc. And the traditionally jazz friendly Asian countries, with Japan and South Korea in the lead, were the first to jump on the trend and import a growing number of European jazz artists.

By the end of 1997, Niels had also signed with the Ron Moss Management company whose main credentials include managing Chick Corea and their offices were located in the same complex at Chick’s Mad Hatter Studios in Los Angeles. Ron and his associate Marc Francovich arranged for a solid contract to be negotiated for Niels with PolyGram and by early 1998 Niels was in the studio working on his new self-titled album, with Swedish bassist Lars Danielsson, French percussionist Xavier Desandre Navarre and American drummer Jeff Boudreaux. Terri Lyne Carrington guested as a drummer on one song and Swedish vocalist Viktoria Tolstoy (great-grand-daughter of Russian author Leo Tolstoy) guested on the Niels Lan Doky original song “More To Come” with lyrics by Tamra Rosanes and Karen Taylor-Good. The album was an equal mix of 6 of Niels’ new original compositions and 6 of his jazz arrangements of contemporary pop songs by artists such as R. Kelly, Prince, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, and the Doobie Brothers.

Working on jazz renditions of contemporary pop songs was something that Niels had started doing since the Doky Brothers albums, which included jazz interpretations of such songs as Bob Marley’s Waiting In Vain featuring guest vocalist Dianne Reeves and Michael Jackson’s Man In The Mirror featuring a breathtaking guitar solo by John Scofield. Niels’ philosophy was - and still is - that the songs that we call “jazz standards” are for the most part pop songs from the 1930s and 40s which jazz musicians started to play their versions because audiences knew the songs and thus could relate to an interpretation even if radically different from the original as was the case with the jazz versions. With time, the jazz versions outlived the original versions and jazz musicians kept playing them decade after decade and eventually they became known as the classic repertoire of the jazz genre and subsequent generations started to do renditions of renditions and eventually it got to a point where most jazz musicians had never heard the original versions but only the versions by jazz masters such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Bill Evans, etc. Niels did not agree with this evolution and worked hard on adapting modern songs to jazz although it wasn’t always easy given the fact that most of the jazz vocabulary had evolved based on the harmonic and melodic structures of the pop songs of the 1930s and 40s and was not instantly compatible with the structures of modern pop music.

When the “Niels Lan Doky” album was released in 1998, it was well-received by the audiences but sparked major controversy with the music critics. While the Doky Brothers only included jazz renditions of a few pop songs and a smaller portion of the overall material, the “Niels Lan Doky” album took the pop song share up to 50% and that did not sit well with the journalists at the time, most of whom were veterans close to retirement age and conservative purists by nature.

All of the critics unanimously condescended the album. Nothing remotely close to this had ever happened to Niels before and when one of the critics, Boris Rabinowitsch from the Danish National newspaper Politiken, wrote something that for music professionals was undisputedly an incorrect fact but was positioned by the journalist as an objective truth rather than a personal subjective opinion, Niels decided to fight back. Niels wrote Boris a letter to point out and complain about the inaccuracies in Boris’ article. This apparently provoked Boris to answer back and before you knew it the two men were engaged in a lengthy heated battle - via letters sent back and forth between Copenhagen and Paris via snail mail - about the moral values of jazz and whether or not modern pop songs are appropriate platforms for jazz improvisation. Niels even brought bass icon and jazz legend Ray Brown into the discussion. Little did that help, and both Niels and Boris stubbornly stuck to their side of the story and after at least a dozen letters their verbal dual eventually reached a dead end. Somehow the leading jazz magazine in Denmark, Jazz Special, had heard about the correspondence between Boris and Niels and requested permission to print the full consecutive correspondence. Niels instantly gave his permission and to his surprise, Boris did too, even though it was clear to Niels that Boris would lose face if the correspondence was published. After the publication, multiple jazz artists wrote to Niels to thank him for his courage to stand up against Boris who was considered the harshest, scariest and meanest of all critics and who was highly influential at the time and thus known for his ability to destroy careers with repeated negative reviews of specific individual artists. But the experience put Boris in a whole new light for Niels, who in a subsequent radio interview stated, “during this dialogue I have come to learn that Boris, contrary to my own and everyone else’s prior assumption, is in no way a mean person with evil intentions to take musicians down. He is rather a passionate and colourful character who just claims his right to have his own strong viewpoints, opinions and beliefs, regardless of how awkward or far fetched they may be. And he stands by them at all times and is fully committed to them no matter what happens. He never doubts himself. This realization actually impressed me and increased my respect for him. And I appreciate his passionate and colourful character. With him around, there is never a dull moment in the written jazz press.”

By the end of the decade, PolyGram merged with Universal Music and as a result, Niels’ contract was transferred to the new conglomerate and by 1999 he was now a Universal Music recording artist. This led to a significant collaboration and lasting friendship between Niels and the legendary singer, songwriter, and producer Gino Vannelli.

Niels was still in high-school in 1979 when Gino Vannelli's big break-through album "Brother To Brother" was released. At the time, Niels and his friends were very puzzled by the extreme production quality of the album, both in terms of the technical quality of the recording itself as well as the awesome performances by the album's cast of musicians, who were all unknown at the time but later became famous, in part due to their exposure on this groundbreaking record. At that time, people took it for granted that any great new album coming out always would have the top most famous players, producers, and engineers on it. But here out of the blue comes an - at the time - totally unknown newcomer from Montreal with an Italian sounding name who blew everyone's mind. Incredible vocals, songwriting, arrangements, performances, recording, mixing, and mastering. Everything just over the top. (The album became a well-deserved hit record and sold in the millions). The album not only blew everyone’s minds, it was also a great mystery to Niels and his peers how a newcomer like Gino could all of a sudden appear out of nowhere and be so utterly amazing. But Niels was later to discover the extent of Gino Vannelli’s talents - and what components constitute such a genius and made him capable of creating such musical masterpieces Niels recalls:

“Most Gino fans, like myself, usually become die-hard Gino fans. Especially as a musician, you can appreciate all of his talents on deeper levels, which go way beyond the surface of just the voice and the song.” Niels met Gino for the first time when he guest appeared on the 1997 "Doky Brothers 2" album and subsequent tour. He also wrote amazing lyrics to one of Niels’ songs that he appeared with on that album, "Tender Lies" (a song that was later also recorded by other artists including Lisa Nilsson and Debbie Sledge). By the end of the 1990s, Niels was signed to Universal Music and the head of the Danish division of the company at the time, Jens Otto Palludan, had recently produced the company's global top seller, the album "Aquarium" released in 1997 by the Danish pop group Aqua. That album sold 27 million copies worldwide and earned the company very large amounts of money and as a result, Jens Otto had a lot of power and influence within the label. Coincidentally Jens Otto was also a big Gino fan and when heard that we were friends, he instantly suggested that Niels ask Gino to produce by his next album following the success of the "Asian Sessions" album released on Universal's Emarcy label in 1999. Niels called Gino the same day and he agreed right away and the next day they started planning the project to be named "Haitek Haiku".

Jens Otto provided a big recording budget and during the year 2000, they spent a total of seven months in the studio full time, at Gino's own studio in Portland, Oregon "Inka Productions" and finally at Bernie Grundman's mastering studio in Los Angeles to finish the record. During this process, Niels experienced pure genius at work on a level that he at that time did not yet know existed. Aside from being a virtuoso vocalist with a deeply personal style and approach, Gino also turned out to be an equally great virtuoso as a composer, arranger, and recording engineer. Plus he plays great piano, drums, percussion, and guitar. Massive creative energy and ideas just flowed out of him in unlimited abundance at all times - like a tap of water that goes on at full volume at anytime its turned on, and stays that way until you choose to turn it off. This was amazing to witness on a daily basis during all those months in Portland. And with the large cast of musicians, singers, programmers, and other personnel coming and going, in and out of the studio during this production, Niels also discovered what made Gino such a genius of a producer: No matter who walked in the door and regardless of their mindset, skills or prior experience - Gino was able to get them all, without exception, to go WAY beyond themselves and reach levels of artistry that they did not know they had in them. And that happened to Niels too. Gino pushed him out of my comfort zone and made him play and phrase in ways he had never done before. It was a great transformational experience that Niels often thinks about and for which he will be forever grateful. Suddenly, Niels understood the reasons why Gino could produce a masterpiece like Brother To Brother in 1979, seemingly out of the blue. But no. It was a result of pure genius right underneath the surface and dedicated hard work.

Before the release of the Haitek Haiku album in the Spring of 2001, Gino and Niels were invited to the Vatican in 2000 to perform one of the songs from the forthcoming Haitek Haiku album at the Pope's annual Christmas concert televised to all the Catholic countries around the world. Here they performed as part of a stellar cast show that also included performances by Bryan Adams, Dionne Warwick, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and others. And they were even invited to meet Pope Jean-Paul II's in person in his private quarters deep inside the Vatican. This project was really a big deal and working with Gino was a big turning point for Niels as a musician. Just as powerful as when he first worked with Thad Jones at age 15. Niels’ musicianship can be divided into two sections, one before and one after having worked with Gino on the Haitek Haiku album. He’s blessed for this incredible experience and the privilege of having been in a studio for seven months full time with such an outstanding musical genius, working on just one album and digging into the deepest subliminal layers of the music. One of the songs on the album had not less than 99 individual tracks. The level of detail that Gino likes to explore in the music is mind-blowing. He can go on forever diving deeper and deeper into it. There is never an end to it and where and when to stop is a choice. Gino told Niels, "I don't finish albums, I abandon them." Niels states, “The magnitude of the Haitek Haiku album production was unprecedented (and still unparalleled) for an album production by any instrumental jazz artist and I am deeply grateful for having had this rare and unique opportunity. When I returned home from Portland, musicians friends of mine who are also Gino fans, looked at me in a new strange way and made me feel like an astronaut returning from a trip to the moon.”

The Haitek Haiku production took up a majority of the year 2000 for Niels, except for a stint to Germany in the Summer where Niels joined a spectacular all-star project with Ray Brown, Michael Brecker, Terri Lyne Carrington and Ulf Wakenius and project initiated by the JazzBaltica festival. By 2001, when the Haitek Haiku album was released, piracy has become a worldwide issue, the CD market had started its decline (towards its eventual final death years later) and radio had become more formatted than ever - so it was becoming very difficult for record labels to market hybrid records, which the Haitek Haiku album was, with its blend of 5 genres: jazz, pop, world, classical and electronica. The album was not a big commercial success upon its release but did garner some new and very devoted fans for Niels. Coincidentally and ironically, on Niels’ return home from this seven months studio marathon in the US, he recorded a simple jazz trio album for the Japanese market called "Café En Plein Air" (later re-released under the title "French Ballads"). This album was recorded direct-to-2-track-stereo, in just one single day at Studio Ferbert in Paris. On its release in Japan, this trio album had great commercial success and actually outsold the Haitek Haiku album. When asked to comment on this, Niels said “Improvisation, spontaneity and live interaction are strengths in jazz that can sometimes compensate greatly for the lack of attention to detail and predictability that is generally considered virtues in pop music. I love both approaches thought, I don't have a preference. It's all good”.

The album "Café En Plein Air" came about on the request of Japanese veteran producer Makoto Kimata who offered to sign Niels to his Keystone label that was distributed in Japan only by VideoArtsMusic, the company founded by another veteran, the former head of the international division at Sony, Hisao Ebine. Niels had met Makoto many years before that while hanging out in recording studios in Copenhagen watching NHØP and Kenny Drew at work while recording Kenny’s albums for Makoto. Kenny died in 1993 but was a top-selling jazz artist for many years towards the end of his life, so with NHØP and drummer Ed Thigpen also living in Copenhagen that brought Makoto there on a regular basis. Given Niels’ exclusive worldwide contract with Universal, he was unable to accept Makoto’s proposal at first. But the two companies worked out a deal that would enable Niels to proceed with Makoto anyway and the stipulations were that the albums were to only be released in Japan and not under the “Niels Lan Doky” name but under a group name. Makoto wanted to record the first album in Paris, use Parisian photography as artwork, record jazz renditions of French songs and have a French-sounding group name. Following a post-recording session dinner in a restaurant in Paris, Makoto coined the group name “Trio Montmartre” and a string of very successful trio albums began. François Moutin was the bassist on the first album of French songs, alongside the American Paris-based drummer Jeff Boudreaux - who is also a former CIA agent! The great Danish engineer Hans Nielsen, that Niels had worked with on most of his projects since his 1986 debut, came down to Paris each time to record the Trio Montmartre albums. For the second album, the concept had now moved to Italian songs.

The album “Casa Dolce Casa” was scheduled to be recorded at Studio Ferber in Paris in mid-September of 2001, but with the sudden terror attacks on 9/11, François Moutin (who had moved to New York) couldn’t get out of New York as all airports were closed. So he had to cancel his participation on the record date. Instead, Niels called Swedish bassist Lars Danielsson, who flew in from Gothenburg on a moment’s notice and did great on the record date in spite of next to no advance preparation time. The “Casa Dolce Casa” album was successful also on its release and the subsequent albums just continued to rise to new levels. The line-up stayed the same with Danielsson and Boudreaux and Trio Montmartre recorded the album “Spain” in 2002 which marked a new peak in terms of sales. At this point in time, Niels was no longer under contract with Universal and Makoto started to bill the albums as “Niels Lan Doky & Trio Montmartre”. At the point in time, Niels was also eager to form a new trio comprised of Paris-based musicians only, in order to have a chance to rehearse more often and develop the music on an ongoing basis. The result was a new edition of the Trio Montmartre that included French bassist Pierre Boussaguet and a young Canadian drummer living in Paris named Karl Jannuska. The trio recorded the album “The Look Of Love” that was released in 2003 to commemorate the 10th year since Kenny Drew’s passing. And in 2004 they recorded the album “Scandinavian Reminiscence” that peaked in terms of critical acclaim and was awarded the prestigious Gold Disc Seal of Approval by the Swing Journal magazine in Japan. It was also licensed to Didier Lockwood’s label in France “Label Ames” who released it in 2005 with a different track sequence and with new artwork and a front cover photo taken by the famous photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who is renowned for his work “The Earth From Above”. In 2007 VideoArtsMusic released a compilation CD called “Best of Best” with a collection of highlights from the previously issued Trio Montmartre albums plus a previously unreleased bonus track, the jazz standard “Summertime” recorded with Pierre Boussaguet and Karl Jannuska which was recorded during the recording session for “The Look Of Love” album in 2003 but didn’t fit on the CD at that time.

The year 2004 was marked by Niels’ debut as film director. Since 2001 Niels had been intrigued by the vast worldwide commercial success of the 1999 Wim Wenders film “Buena Vista Social Club”. As this feature-length music documentary was driven almost entirely by the personal charisma of its cast of old Cuban musicians, Niels felt that a similar and even more charismatic cast of musicians could be found in the jazz world and by the end of 2001 he had set out to develop a plan to do a jazz equivalent of “Buena Vista Social Club”. His first instinct was to write to Lars Von Trier’s film production company Zentropa to propose the idea. Within less than two weeks their producer in charge of documentaries, Carsten Holst, called Niels up, excited about the idea and invited Niels out to Zentropa for an initial meeting in which also Lars Von Trier took part, in addition to Lars’ co-director Anders Refn. A development phase was started and Niels and Carsten travelled to the MIPCOM film and TV convention in Cannes to meet with potential TV stations and theatrical distributors in view of pre-sales to finance the film’s expensive production. Zentropa was just coming off the year 2000 blockbuster success of Lars’ film “Dancer In The Dark” which won the Golden Palm award in Cannes and sold 2 million cinema tickets in France alone. As a result, Niels and Carsten received a red carpet welcome everywhere in Paris as well as Cannes. Nevertheless, it took quite a while to develop the project let alone finance it. And with Zentropa being preoccupied with the huge international demand for Lars’ and his follow up films, they were only sporadically able to devote attention the jazz film project. The project eventually transitioned via multiple film companies before eventually ending up with a coalition of multiple investors and production companies including the Danish Broadcast Corporation (DR), Storm Productions, Park Film a.o.

By the Summer of 2004, Niels was ready to start shooting the film and had assembled a stunning international and multi-generational cast of stellar musicians including Toots Thielemans, Johnny Griffin, Didier Lockwood, Lisa Nilsson, Albert “Tootie” Heath, and Mads Vinding. Aside from directing and producing, Niels also appeared as a pianist in the film and wrote most of its music. The film was shot on location in Copenhagen in and around the original 1960s premises of the legendary jazz club Montmartre. The club had been closed since 1976 and after a period as a lawyer’s office, it had been a hair-dressing school for many years. But given fact that it was a school, they were closed for the Summer holiday and as a result, Niels was allowed to rent the room and clear it completely and temporarily rebuild it as a jazz club and bring back some of the old veterans from the club to film them playing some great music and talk about life, philosophy, the passing of time, and much more. Two concerts were scheduled and filmed at the club in July of 2004 as part of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival and it was a huge sensation and the shows sold out instantly when announced in spite of a record high ticket price. A larger concert hall warm-up show at Tivoli Gardens was added the day before in order to accommodate ticket sales demand.

The movie was entitled “Between a Smile and a Tear” and came on in 2005 and was released in movie theatres and as a soundtrack CD and later on DVD and TV, in Denmark, France, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Israel among other places. The entire musicians cast from the film did a tour of jazz festivals around Europe in the Summer of 2005 and in 2005 and well into 2006, the trio with Mads Vinding, Tootie Heath and Niels plus the film’s vocalist Lisa Nilsson, toured as a quartet and did 26 concerts within the month of April 2006 in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Lisa and Niels also went to Austria and took bassist Pierre Boussaguet and drummer Alex Riel with them. And in October 2008 Lisa and Niels did a French tour with Pierre Boussaguet and Albert “Tootie” Heath.

Niels’ Summer of 2006 consisted of three big and important projects for Niels, first a symphony orchestra project with guests Lisa Nilsson and Didier Lockwood all appearing together with the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra (aka The Tivoli Symphony Orchestra), then the Vong Nguyet project (Vietnamese for Wishing Upon The Moon) consisting of a large array of top musicians and singers from Vietnam appearing with Niels and his jazz musicians.

The Vong Nguyet project was built as a world music event and the concert took place at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, one of Europe’s oldest and most prominent rock festival and which also had an ongoing interest in presenting world music acts every year. Directly after that Niels headed to Copenhagen to pick up Pat Metheny at the airport. Pat had accepted Niels’ request to join him as a guest with a Danish all-star band that he put together for the 2006 edition of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. The band consisted of Palle Mikkelborg, Alex Riel, Marilyn Mazur, Jesper Lundgaard, Tomas Franck and of course Niels on piano. The band appeared at Tivoli Gardens on their outdoor stage called Plænen. It was a beautiful sunny day and more than 25.000 people came to see the show, which was very successful, and it was engineered by Pat’s regular sound engineer David Oakes. Pat stayed in Copenhagen for almost a week and Niels also arranged for Pat to do several days of masterclasses and workshops at the conservatory, some of which bassist Chris McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez took part in.

Follow a long period with a highly intense workload with up to 6 months a year on the road, Niels was unable to properly attend to his marriage and by the Summer of 2006, Niels and his wife mutually concluded that they had grown apart and that their relationship had faded beyond repair so they parted on friendly terms soon after. With Niels’ twins having reached teen age and approaching the end of high-school, Niels saw a window of opportunity ahead for more time to himself. With a newfound love, Simone, he soon started to go to lots of parties, travel on vacations to cool places, hang out in Parisian cafés with friends and many of the other things he had been able to do since becoming a father og twins at age 26 and trying to support his family while engaging in the near-mission-impossible task of simultaneously maintaining an international career as a jazz pianist. It was a liberating time for Niels and his relationship with his children indirectly strengthened also as a result of the divorce because they had to make conscious efforts to spend time together and that yielded more quality time and Ken and Mai suddenly had a far more joyful, happy and well-rested father than they had had in the preceding years.

2007 turned out to be yet another busy year for Niels. His new album production was a co-production between Hisao Ebine at VAM in Japan and the new Danish label CPH:REC founded by Niels’ former EMI associates, Mik Christensen and Nick Foss. The album featured the latest edition of Niels’ trio which now comprised bassist Pierre Boussaguet and drummer Alex Riel - and Hisao Ebine and Niels agreed to finally fully abort the Trio Montmartre name so even in Japan the album was now just released under the “Niels Lan Doky” name only. The project consisted of a few originals but the bulk of the album was jazz renditions of themes my Russian classical composers such as Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and Rachmaninoff. The trio recorded the album at Hans Nielsen’s studio in Copenhagen and Niels took the recording to Oslo to mix it with legendary ECM engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug at his famous Rainbow Studios in Oslo. One of the original songs on the album was a remake of Niels’ 2004 instrumental hit song “Misty Dawn” and this new version was featured in a Samsung TV commercial in which Niels was mentioned by name. The TV commercial which also involved Danish visual artists Per Arnoldi was selected for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Danish Design Museum. A big deal was made out of this as the head of Samsung Europe flew in with a large delegation for a celebratory event at the Danish Design Museum where Niels and his trio also performed.

By now, Niels had resumed contact with his brother Chris who earlier on had moved back to Copenhagen to look after their aging parents and to start a family of his own. In early 2008 Niels and Chris both attended their Vietnamese cousin Cuong’s birthday party in Paris. There was live music at the party and as a result lots of musical instruments. At one point in the evening, Cuong spontaneously asked Niels and Chris to go on stage and play a few songs together for the many guests. Put on the spot, there was no real room for declining, so Niels and Chris went on to play a couple of tunes and this marked the first time they had played together in exactly 10 years. This positive experience was just the beginning because not long after, the Ben Webster Foundation announced that they had selected both brothers to receive and share the Ben Webster Award 2008. The award involved a money prize and an engagement to perform a concert with a line-up of their choice. The concert took place at Glassalen in Tivoli Gardens and all 900 tickets were sold out in advance. The show was reportedly attended by HM The Queen of Denmark, who was involved in creating the Ben Webster Foundation in 1976. The show consisted of 3 parts, first, a set my Niels and his quartet with violinist Didier Lockwood added to his trio with Pierre Boussaguet and Alex Riel. Then a set with Chris’ quartet which included Danish singer Sinne Eeg, Swedish pianist Lars Jansson and American drummer Peter Erskine.

And finally a third set with Niels and Chris playing together in a trio setting with Alex Riel on drums. The concert was very well received and since then, Niels and Chris have played together at least once a year.

By the end of 2008 Niels and his girlfriend Simone had broken up and Niels was ready for a change of scenery and was considering moving back full time to the US. As he was involved in a project under development in Los Angeles, with vocalist Joss Stone and Eurhythmics songwriter Dave Stewart, Niels decided to head out to Los Angeles and explore whether it could perhaps make sense for him to move out there. So in January of 2009, Niels flew off to Los Angeles and stayed with Tootie Heath and his wife Beverly in their wonderful house in Altadena while looking at houses and trying to take a driver’s license. Niels arrived just in time for Barack Obama’s inauguration as US president and it was a great bonus and emotional moment for Niels to have the privilege to watch the inauguration on live TV together with two of his closest friends who happen to be elderly African-Americans watching the first African-American president take office.

Niels never got comfortable with the idea of driving on a daily basis, which is inevitable in a city like Los Angeles and he never took the final test to get his California driver’s license. He also felt far away from Europe with the 9 hour time difference and the resulting inability to communicate live with most people over there. After some months and multiple trips back and forth between Los Angeles and Paris, Niels finally decided to opt-out of the idea of moving to Los Angeles and decided to head back to Paris and join a Summer of 2009 tour that was coming together under the musical direction of legendary producer and label founder Creed Taylor. The band was called The CTI All-Stars, named after his legendary 1970s label and featured, aside from Niels on piano, Hubert Laws, Bill Evans, Randy Brecker, Airto, Flora Purim, Mark Egan, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and Russell Malone. On their concert at the Montreux Festival in Switzerland, the band was augmented by John McLaughlin on guitar, George Duke on electric piano and Jamie Cullum on vocals. The concert was filmed and recorded and later came out as CD and Blu-Ray DVD on the Japanese label King Records.

Around the same time, Niels meets his future second wife Rizwana, who is from London and of Indian background. As they are living in different countries, the relationship evolves very slowly over time and doesn’t result in marriage until early 2012.

By late 2009 Niels receives a grouped email from bassist Mads Vinding stating that he had just found out that the original jazz club Montmartre premises in Copenhagen had become vacant and available for sale or rental and sending along the real estate agent prospect and urging everyone to look for investors to reopen the Montmartre permanently at its original address.

Niels immediately contacts a wealthy entrepreneur friend of his to propose the idea and immediately obtains his accept and shortly after Niels commits to moving back to Copenhagen to reopen the Montmartre. Plans are kept secret for a while but the lease is quickly secured.

Over the Christmas holidays of 2009, Niels has his most intense deadline ever. He was commissioned by the UNESCO in Paris to compose an original suite, record it on CD and deliver a live performance with video scenography of it in Paris for the January 2010 VIP launch event in Paris of UNESCO’s International Year of Biodiversity 2010. Niels was given a good budget and was able to line up a magnificent international cast of musicians, but he was only given one month to complete the project. For a whole month, he literally had to work around the clock 7 days a week including Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, getting hardly any sleep but completing the project just in time. The suite was called “The Story Of Earth And Water” and the initial stock of CDs for the 500 VIP delegates at the UNESCO event arrived from the factory by DHL just 20 minutes before the guests arrived at the Museum of Natural History in Paris where the event was held. The show was a big success. But there was no time to rest as Niels headed straight on to Copenhagen to prepare for the announcement of the Montmartre reopening.

The announcement of the reopening of Jazzhus Montmartre at its original location for the first time since 1976 took place at 6 AM on a Monday morning in February of 2010. The news took the city (and country) by storm. Niels spent the whole day 6 am to 11 PM going around to TV stations, radio stations, morning shows, evening shows, newspapers and other media giving interviews and talking about the club’s permanent reopening. By May 1st 2010, the club reopened and was an instant success although the amount of work required on Niels’s part as a music director was overwhelming and by the end of the year, he gave his 3 months notice and terminated his job as music director there effective February 1st, 2011.

Prior to the Montmartre reopening, Niels had also found time to record and release a new album appropriately entitled “Return To Denmark” and released in connection with the Montmartre reopening and featuring an edition of Niels’ trio with Alex Riel on drums and Morten Ramsbøl on bass.

In the fall of 2010, actor Roger Moore stopped by one of Niels’ performances at Montmontre. As a huge James Bond fan, this was very exciting for Niels to finally meet a 007 and the pair had the chance to chat backstage after the show to say hello. Niels recalls Roger said with a very strong British accent “It’s so nice to hear some Jazz.” Niels asks what music he mostly listened to and he responded, “My wife and I mostly listen to chamber music.”

So Niels return home was a good one, independently of the Montmartre. However, with the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 still lingering many real estate markets around Paris had collapsed and Niels had been unable to sell his house which had been put up for sale since 2009 so in February 2011 he went back to Paris and decided to postpone his permanent relocation to Denmark.

While in Denmark Niels had met and heard the young Danish drummer Niclas Bardeleben, and he impressed Niels to the point that he had hired him to be the house drummer at Montmartre. Niclas introduced Niels to an even younger Danish musician, bassist Jonathan Bremer. While Niels was in Copenhagen the three of them got together regularly for private jam sessions.

Come November 2010 Niels was offered 2 gigs in France including Paris that his own trio was not available for, and Niels then hired Jonathan (18) and Niclas (19) for these gigs. Aside from the great opportunity for these young musicians to get exposure abroad, it was also a refreshing and inspiring experience for Niels to play with musicians a generation younger than himself, with very different instincts, backgrounds, and musical baggage. Added to the fact that the gigs went incredibly well and received standing ovations, Niels began to become conscious of the fact that ever since his professional debut at age 13 he had always been the youngest in the band and that that could not go on forever. Furthermore, many of the historic figures in jazz such as Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, etc had consistently hired young musicians in their bands. Niels started to become conscious of the fact that it was perhaps soon his turn to take on the role that elders before him had taken. By March of 2011, Niels decided to disband his current trio after their last concert in Oslo, and he took Niclas and Jonathan into the studio to record his next trio album “Human Behaviour” that came out a few months later and was celebrated at a concert at Tivoli Concert Hall during the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Gino Vannelli and David Sanborn guest appeared in the second half of the show and soon after the trio went off to Spain to perform a televised concert at the San Javier Jazz Festival. Later that year the trio came back to play in Paris and went straight on from there to Vietnam to perform at the Hanoi Opera and Ho Chi Minh City Opera.

By the very end of 2011, Rizwana and Niels had decided to get married and Niels travelled to London in early February 2012 for the marriage ceremony which was also attended by Niels’ father and his brother Chris and his family. Their mother was unable to attend as she was at this point diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and unable to travel. By October that same year, Rizwana gave birth to Niels’s third child, a son named Rumi. Most of the year 2012 was spent in London as they had decided for Rumi to be born there. But Niels travelled off abroad on a regular basis for concerts and also for meetings in Copenhagen with his new associate, celebrity chef and gastronomy entrepreneur, Claus Meyer, who is known as the founding father of the New Nordic Cuisine and the main founder and investor of the restaurant Noma that won the World’s Best Restaurant award four times. Given the recent success of New Nordic Cuisine and the rising international interest for Scandinavian jazz, Claus and Niels had decided to collaborate on a jazz club project that combined the two. So they met on a regular basis to exchange and develop concepts and ideas. Coincidentally, when Claus found the right venue in Copenhagen for the project, it coincided with the spontaneous arrival of an unsolicited buyer for Niels’ house in Paris. So by January 2013 Niels had sold the house and bought a big apartment in the Østerbro district of Copenhagen.