New Notes at the Square Theatre: All music starts with breathing

You don't have to travel halfway around the world or seek out other ultimate things to experience something you didn't know was possible. You can also just go to a small theatre in Amsterdam Oost. Out of pure curiosity, and because I didn't feel like all the grand violence of festival summer for a while, it was time for ‘Emerging in Whispers’ by Irene Sorozábal Moreno at the Plein Theatre.

There, where the capital city composer Huba de Graaff laid the foundations for her victory lap, with singer Naaz, in the Holland Festival, Spanish multi-artist Sorozábal Moreno brought something I had never heard before. During what was the final afternoon of this season's Nieuwe Noten series, she breathed. But in such a way that it became music.

Not for the masses

What the quite fragile singer, recorder player and composer pulled out of her body was sensual and musically innovative, sometimes accompanied by a bass clarinetist who struggled to keep up with her (Michele Mazzini), and here and there embellished by a very hushed Bea Álvarez, who caused something with midi keyboards and samples. And there was also something with two old pick-ups.

This gathering of several dozen audience members and three performers is not for the masses, Indeed, this is small and delicate, hard to explain and certainly not necessarily overwhelming musical theatre for connoisseurs, or curiously inclined types like yours truly. Where can the human voice all come from, how can panting turn into percussion? Irene Sorozábal Moreno is here figuring things out in the intimate laboratory of the Square Theatre, which later, in one form or another, find their way into the big world, outside.

This is exclusive, doesn't cost a turd and sometimes you just have to seek it out. Because it makes you feel good.

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