Gaudeamus Festival opens with reaction to The State of Andriessen

21/5/2024 | The Gaudeamus Festival will take place in Utrecht from 6 to 10 September 2024. The festival includes more than 45 concerts, interdisciplinary performances, the Gaudeamus Award, workshops, lectures and a seminar. Among the highlights are the opening night in TivoliVredenburg, in which the iconic work The State by Louis Andriessen takes centre stage, and a brand new piece by composer Oscar Bettison, commissioned by Asko|Schönberg in response to The State. Both works will be performed in original settings by Asko|Schönberg and Ensemble Klang. Other festival highlights include the French orchestra ONCEIM & Christian Marclay, the performance ZUAM from Futurists Foundation and a programme in collaboration with London-based label Nonclassical. Full programming will be announced 10 August.

The State is one of the leading Dutch compositions of the twentieth century - there is even a rock band named after it - but is rarely performed live in original instrumentation because of its large instrumentation. With this work, Andriessen brought minimal music to the Netherlands; however, he gave it a completely individual twist. That the piece caused such a shockwave in and outside the Netherlands has everything to do with its almost obsessive character. The State is a battle. Two orchestras take on each other. Andriessen wrote it, in his own words, as a contribution to the debate on the relationship between music and politics. This theme is the thread running through the rest of the evening, in which the Gaudeamus Festival explores how the current generation of composers thinks about this. Also On the Slow Weather of Dreams by Bettison, which will have its world premiere in Utrecht, is, like The State a politically charged mirror composition. Bettison: "My view is that as the world has become smaller, the idea of the state, of our socio-political interactions, has become fragmented and shattered." The Anglo-American Bettison studied with Louis Andriessen in the late 1990s, a period he characterises as decisive in finding his musical voice.

Nonclassical

As part of its 20th anniversary, English platform Nonclassical is producing three concerts during the Gaudeamus Festival. The platform, founded by Gabriel Prokofiev (the grandson of), makes contemporary classical music accessible by connecting it with electronic music and presenting it outside the traditional concert hall. During the Gaudeamus Festival, Nonclassical presents, among others, the young London composer and performer Jasmine Morris. Using her synthesisers, a laptop, guitar effects and a cassette player, she samples, edits and recontextualises a colourful sound world, where orchestral sounds, feedback and machine noise find each other seamlessly. Rising star NikNak brings a solo DJ set with improvised performance elements, on the border of ambient, glitch and experimental club music. Klavikon reinterprets electronic music without using loops, laptops or sequencers but with his amplified 'prepared' piano. The 88 keys are supplemented by his own inventions and found objects. With, among others, a custom-made pick-up and a robot dog, he builds a whole new sound world.

Futurists Foundation / Jerzy Bielski & Thomas Brand

Futurists Foundation / Jerzy Bielski & Thomas Brand dive into the world of their own imagination with the performance ZUAM. Four opera singers and a deaf dancer perform a compelling operatic ritual centred on sign language and prototals. The music is an eclectic mix of traditional music from Inuit, Tibetan, Zulu and Balinese cultures on the one hand, and modern electronics on the other. The dividing line between reality and illusion blurs...

Metamorphosis

Production house The Diamond Factory and the Maat Saxophone Quartet join hands for Metamorphosis, A Virtual Opera by composer and librettist Nuno Lobo and video artist Pedro Lobo. The basis is the short story The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, in which a man turns into an insect overnight. Supported by real-time video projections, the four musicians, also characters, bring this 1912 story to our digital age, where identity loss and social alienation reign supreme.

ONCEIM & Christian Marclay

The 35-piece French orchestra ONCEIM performs the world premiere of Found in Orchestra by renowned Swiss-American composer, turntablist and visual artist Christian Marclay, who has previously collaborated with John Zorn and Sonic Youth, among others. The electro-acoustic work is built around samples from the orchestra itself, which of course also gets to work live and in real time. In addition to Marclay's work, ONCEIM will also play the world premiere Together We Feel And Alone We Experience by Scottish-Dutch composer Genevieve Murphy, in which she herself plays along on bagpipes.

And there is more

FOR REALfrom Andrea Voets is a theatrical radio show about the still prevalent sexist intellectual undermining of women. The audience is a guest in her radio studio, from where stories and experiences of 14 women are 'broadcast'. Live interviews with women in the audience are an integral part of the show. Each edition of FOR REAL will be recorded and released as a podcast. The Utrecht-based makers' collective BUI is a guest at the festival for the fourth time and is among the big audience favourites every time. This year, they are building a ritual playground in the library on Neude. Wind instruments extended with PVC tubes will be heard, scaffolding will be erected and dismantled, singing and responding to ambient sounds. And what about Binkbeats? In his interactive performative sound installation OHM the audience literally steps into a world of overwhelming resonance, texture and polyrhythmics. This installation by Binkbeats aka Frank Wienk (percussionist of HIIIT) can be visited throughout the festival.

Gaudeamus scouts talent from home and abroad and, as commissioner, producer and stage, contributes to the development of the careers of innovative composers, (sound) artists, performers and musicians. They are challenged to create new, innovative works. This is accompanied by years of support and guidance.

Gaudeamus Festival – Wed 4 to Sun 8 September 2024 – Utrecht – Website