A 20-minute live version of “Sunday Child” was recorded at record store Black Gold, live from the heart of Amsterdam. For the Tiny Desk-like performance, multi-instrumentalist Thysenterprise was joined by the rhythm section of Radiohop (Joel Feldtmann Svedberg on bass, Euan Jenkins on drums) and special guest Soul Supreme on keys.

The four musicians got together just moments before the gig, talked things through, and went on a musical trip together. The session starts with the album intro “ESSENTIAL #1” before diving straight into the original bassline and melody of “Sunday Child.” The video shows a melodic start that slowly evolves into a whole other groove, ranging from free jazz to hip-hop. Which, in many ways, is the core of Thysenterprise’s work and a summary of his newest album ESSENTIAL as a whole.

Last week, Jamie Cullum introduced “Sunday Child” in The Jazz Show on BBC Radio 2 as “Kinda like the way Madlib makes jazz. (...) a beatmaker’s approach to spiritual jazz.” This live session shot during the album release party of ESSENTIAL, shows just that: the improvisations, solos, and the musicians’ playful live takes on the motif of “Sunday Child” breathe as much jazz as hip-hop grooves.

“In many ways, ‘Sunday Child’ is a double tribute,” says Reinier Thijs a.k.a. Thysenterprise. “One to Pharoah Sanders' ‘The Creator Has A Masterplan,’ the other to my late father. The bassline is—undoubtedly—an extension of the original bass. For the entire concept of my 8-minute song, I drew inspiration from Sanders' masterpiece and his other work from the late-sixties and early-seventies, like ‘Hum Allah’ and ‘Black Unity.’”

The title “Sunday Child” is a literal translation from the Dutch word 'zondagskind,' which means someone who always has luck. For the most part, that was the case for Thysenterprise’s late father. The double saxophone solo in the song—alto and tenor—is an imagination of the son and father playing together in search of something deeper. One might say spiritual, or: ESSENTIAL, as Thysenterprise sees it.