saxophonist, improviser, composer.
“John Dikeman, the Real Deal in Free Jazz… It is as if the entire history of the best moments of free jazz has converged in his playing, which is nevertheless unique enough not to sound like a replica or reproduction. …
the best possible European free jazz” - Eurojazzist
“John Dikeman is for me the most exciting saxophonist around, with such ferocious technical power to make the extended range of the horn sound like the standard range, at which range he has some of the ragged throatiness of Peter Brotzmann.“ - UKJazz News
“The saxophonist… puts fire to the fuse with the Old Testament fury that Charles Gayle displays on his best trio records. More than improvisation or free jazz you hear übergospel: reeling with religious conviction and tortuous dynamism, with roaring pounding in the low register, split tones and a timbre that is almost torn to pieces.” - Guy Peters, Enola.
BIOGRAPHY
John Dikeman is an American-Dutch saxophonist and composer based in Ostend, Belgium. Drawing on a wide range of sources, his playing spans the full gamut of improvised music and technique, from sound research and extended instrumental technique to high-energy free jazz. He currently leads the quartet Old Adam on Turtle Island, with Marta Warelis, Aaron Lumley, and Sun-Mi Hong, whose self-titled debut appeared on Relative Pitch Records in 2025, and the long-running trio Dikeman, Parker, Drake, with William Parker and Hamid Drake, which grew out of an invitation to the pair to perform at Doek Festival #12 in 2014. Other active projects include Cease Fire! (with drummer Aleksandar Škorić), the FDF Trio, and the Luís Vicente 4tet, alongside No Plan Man with Mauro Pawlowski, Eric Thielemans, and Peter Jacquemyn. He is also a member of Spinifex, Bida Orchestra, and Kuhn Fu, plays in the Genevieve Murphy Band, and co-founded Cactus Truck, with Jasper Stadhouders and Onno Govaert. Recent collaborations include projects with Joe McPhee, John Edwards, Steve Noble, Pat Thomas, Luke Stewart, Ava Mendoza, and Johan Berthling.
John grew up in Wyoming and began performing professionally at sixteen. He studied saxophone and composition at Interlochen Arts Academy, worked with Milford Graves at Bennington College, and studied privately with Joe Maneri. After some years in the US and a period in Cairo, he settled in Amsterdam in 2008. Since then he has toured widely across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia, including tours and performances in Japan, Russia, and Palestine. He became a core member of Stichting Doek in 2012, and after nearly two decades in Amsterdam, relocated to Ostend in 2026.
He has performed as a soloist with groups ranging from the William Parker Celestial Lighthouse, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Flipper, Dean Blunt and the Metropole Orkest to Mohamed Mounir and the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared at venues and festivals including Lincoln Center, North Sea Jazz Festival, London Jazz Festival, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Berlin Jazz Festival, the Bimhuis, SMAK, and De Singer.