The New York Second is a Netherlands-based jazz group established in 2015. It features the compositions of bandleader and pianist Harald Walkate and has released four albums to date: Bay of Poets (2017), Emergo (2020), Music at Night (2022) and After the Hours, the Minutes (2023). Its fifth album, Room for Other People (2024) will be released early 2025, with pre-release singles coming out starting October ’24.
The group has performed and recorded as a quartet, as a quintet, as a septet, as a trio and – on the new album – in octet setting.
The group’s albums and performances have featured some of the Netherlands’ best-known musicians, including Teus Nobel, Jasper van Damme, Tom Beek, Mark-Alban Lotz, Thomas Pol, Jesse Schilderink and Vincent Veeneman. On the new album, the group is joined by the internationally renowned vibraphonist Rob Waring.
The music of The New York Second can be classified as contemporary jazz, but takes on influences from soul, Latin and classical. Critics have typified the music as “atmospheric”, “poetic” and “cinematic”.
photo: Stijn Kuiper
In August 2022, the prominent Dutch jazz magazine Jazzism featured Harald and The New York Second in an article that covered a wide range of subjects, from Harald’s double life to how a taxi driver in Florida inspired one of the pieces on Music at Night.
Click on the pictures or read the text in pdf for the full story.
Albums
Video
Inspiration
These jazz tracks helped inspire our compositions: to us they are everything that is also often said about our own music – contemporary jazz that is “atmospheric”, “poetic” and “cinematic”. And inspirational!