Jack Monck has been playing bass guitar since 1968 when a shared love of the blues got him started playing with Steve and Phil Miller and Pip Pyle in Delivery. They played around England and backed visiting American blues artists. In the early 70s Jack played in Cambridge with Syd Barrett, Fred Frith and Chris Cutler and in London with Geoff Leigh in Radar Favourites. From then on he played in groups too numerous and obscure to mention in the London area.Jack had started writing his own songs in the mid 70s, which were mainly studio or home recorded projects some of which finally came out on Voiceprint CD Inside the Whale in 2001.He started his own group That Uncertain Feeling in 1985, later the Chan/Monck Group with Marc Hadley, and co-formed the Relatives in 1988. He was by this time playing mainly on the East London jazz scene.

In 1993 he started playing with Geoff Leigh in the Highly Irregulars. They recruited percussionist Lahcen Lahbib and in 1996 they both co-formed Momo with whom he gigged extensively in London and the UK until 2001.
In 1999 Jack completed Access to Music's Instrumental Music Facilitator course and started teaching bass guitar at Colchester Institute where he remains today.

www.myspace.com/jackmonck

Kees Meijlink

I play the trombone, tuba, sousaphone and guitar and I also sing. I’m a musical omnivore, love playing salsa as well as the blues, Kurt Weill or the Relatives. It’s all fine, as long as it sounds good and you can move on it. I played many gigs all over Europe with Orchestre Tegenwind, was together with WillemJan part of the Slipover and I’m particularly proud of having been a member of the XLjazz Orchestre, when performing the Jazz from Hell project: a program devoted to the music of Frank Zappa. (cd ZappaXL). I’m a singer and guitarplayer in Yep, a very nice band from Utrecht.

I’ve been playing with the guys from the Relatives in different settings for a very long time, so they really feel like family to me. It is a pleasure to be a member of this band.

The Rotterdam drummer Mels Bol started in 1968. Drummers who inspired him in the early 70’s and still do, are: Koperen Ko, Cees See, John Hiseman, Daniel Seraphine, Robert Wyatt, Victor Lewis, Paul Motion, John Riley, Lucas van Merwijk, Tom Rainey & Bill Stewart. The period as member of the Rotterdam band “Crusade” which played covers and own compositions was a fruitful experimental period with bandmembers such as Willem van der Wall, Henk Bol, Cleem Determeyer & Pjotr Jurtschenko. They all went out to other bands such as “Himalaya” and “Finch”.Mels Bol became member of Cuby’s “Red White and Blue” in 1975 later Cuby and the Blizzards, in which he played with the legendary Herman Brood.
After the bluesidiom, jazz was close to his musical development.Up from 1985 Mels works on jazz and improvised music and he played in the Rotterdam Jazz Project with lots of Dutch and foreign bandleaders such as: Theo Hoogstins, Paul Stocker, Ruud Bergamin, Sean Bergin, John Tchicai, Corrie van Binsbergen en Ferdi Schukking.Many years of playing in commercial bands, bluesbands, jazz quartets and bigbands followed like: Crusade and Friends,Blue Train, Pitch Band, Big Fun Band,Big Band Blast and Bill Bakers Bigband, in which he performed as freelance drummer in England and the U.S.A.

Apart from the Relatives Mels is also doing now his own project the “Melle Project”,in which he composes and writes lyrics.

Pjotr Jurtschenko

Pjotr Jurtschenko started making music when he was young. In his first band he played the guitar at the age of 16, but the more and more he became interested in playing the flute. Soon he became member of the symphonic rockband “ Crusade” (in which Mels Bol played also in that period). Shortly after he started playing different saxophones and was member of the commercial band “ Exclusive ”, in which he had a lot of musical experience.
Apart from that, he played in the saxophone quartet “ Reed My Lips ” and the synthesizer band “Fractal” (with Cees v.d. Meulen en Paul Heinerman), in which he played all kinds of acoustic instruments. In that period he also played in some bands with WillemJan Droog . Pjotr played the tenorsax and the sopranosax on the CD “Private sun”of Paul Heineman. He played on the CD “Contame una historia” of tangosinger Mabel Gonzales. Apart from the Relatives Pjotr plays in the jazz formation “Demeter Jazz” and in the bigband “ Enterprise ”.

WillemJan Droog, son of a jazzmusician, started pianolessons when he was 6 and started studying classical guitar when he was 12. As guitarplayer he played in several blues bands in the 60’s, when he met Henk Weltevreden who was more influenced by English popjazz-bands such as Soft Machine & Caravan, for who Henk organized Dutch tours. In that period Willem joined a local band “Jazz Consort” to participate in the Laren Jazzfestival “concours” 1973.With Henk Weltevreden he put up several bands playing original compositions and finding out an own sound. “Ma Glop”, (with a.o. Arno van Nieuwenhuize & Jan de Ligt) and later on “Slipover” with Kees Meijlink, Gert van Seters & Rutger van Otterloo. Slipover did a lot of gigs on the Dutch Jazz Scene and produced the E P. 001 in 1980 which was broadcasted a couple of times on Dutch radio.
The more and more WillemJan was interested in composing and playing keyboards. When this Slipover formation split up, WillemJan formed SlipoverNieuw with perfomer Hans Rikken and tenorsaxplayer Peter van Bergen. Later he formed with Hans Rikken the band Bella Bravo, an experimental theatermusic group with an opera singer, with whom they did several performances. In 1988 WillemJan worked in London (as an architect) where he met Jack Monck. Once the project had finished and Willem had to go back to Holland, they decided to start up an Anglo-Dutch band which became the Relatives.

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