It kept me awake one night. About that Radio Kunststof broadcast with Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer. Because, what exactly did the King and Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer say to each other and how does a singing Princess Amalia sound? Listen in. [audioplayer file="https://cultureelpersbureau.nl//wp-content/uploads/2016/03/WA-vs-Pfeijffer-©brechtje-roos-put-into-sound.mp3″] (music- Coralie Clement, recording- Put into Sound)
Aaltje van Buuren enjoys her busy life. She is the wife of successful star conductor Jaap van Zweden. She dedicates her charm and energy worldwide to non-profit organisations that improve the daily lives of autistic children. Music and art are forces that run like a thread through everything she touches. The family can be seen every week...
There is one thing almost as much fun as going to see a play. According to some, it is even more fun than going to see a play: reading a play yourself. And then not by yourself, but with a few others. That you divide the roles and start reading aloud. With a cup of tea, coffee or a glass of wine on the side....
Every stage show, film, or concert has a scene that touches you. A moment that evokes emotion, amazement, or perhaps disgust. Even in director Sam Mendes' James Bond film Spectre, there is such a moment that stays with you. It concerns the excerpt in which classical music, namely the aria Cum dederit from Antonio Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus RV 608,...
Since I can't put all my music musings about Bowie in the (already planned before his death) animation column in mid-March anyway, I'll just muse with the rest of the world now after B-day 10 01 2016. After all, see the cover of Heroes come up quite often in the media. That black-and-white picture where he's in some kind of puppet-like pose...
Technically, of course, he has already risen from the dead once. After all, open heart surgery (2004) shuts down your heart. Before, you were then dead. Now you come back from anaesthesia with a new life. Not surprising, then, that 69-year-old pop culture phenomenon David Bowie hangs his current life on Lazarus: a musical theatre piece, a song, named after the biblical wanderer...
He would have turned 91 on 26 March, but died Tuesday night, 5 January, in his hometown of Baden-Baden. Pierre Boulez was the last surviving composer of the group that changed the direction of music after WWII. His fellow maestros preceded him: Karlheinz Stockhausen died in 2007, Luciano Berio in 2003, Karel Goeyvaerts in 1993 and...
It will be the big task for companies and interest clubs in culture for 2016: how do we improve the image of 'the sector'? Next year - I predict - no expense will be spared to improve the culture sector's image. There will probably also be a study on how to improve that image. This...
But then. A day before Christmas, the prime minister experiences a sleepless night. He has no appetite for the Glühwein provided by the housekeeping service. The Christmas pastry, delivered by a friendly VVD baker, remains untouched. The security guards see their object sitting upright in his bed... Read and shudder That summer evening, Michelle de Kat sits smugly in a corner of the blood-hot studio
Saturday 13 December, the NTR Saturday matinee presents the world premiere of Unscrolled for piano and orchestra by Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo (Hainan, 1976), with pianist Emanuele Arciuli and the Residentie Orkest conducted by Emilio Pomàrico. This kicks off his three-month stay as composer in residence of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Ruo is the first to receive this honour,...
There is usually no 'master plan' behind the best and worst things in life. Of course, 25-year-old Adele's 'come-back' has been carefully orchestrated, from the tentative release, to the title of the first song, the wave of spontaneous covers around the world and the announcement not to go on spotify (for now). In fact, the orchestration is so obvious that...
Composer and pianist Jeroen van Vliet - as 2014 Boy Edgar Prize winner - was commissioned to draw inspiration from Leo Cuypers' Zeelandsuite (1977) for new work. He put the band together and, in the tradition Cuypers and his men, played at various Zeeland venues. As then, everything was recorded. On CD and (award-winning) DVD this time. Last May, I was...
Last spring, while looking at Catinka Kersten's newly installed sculpture on the patio of museum Beelden aan Zee, Iris Le Rütte's sculpture Daphne caught my eye. A woman who instead of a head and arms stretched branches to the sky. It is a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses: the nymph Daphne, on the...
This text was initially spoken as a column commissioned by the Netherlands Chamber Choir (April 2015- premiere at Theatre De Harmonie Leeuwarden). Trip to Scandinavia is a variation on that in three parts. Now with animation. Also watch episodes 1 & 2.
Once in a while it resurfaces, the next idea. An ideal of the future: if some public talker were to eavesdrop a little more on musicians. What would take place? In the clay The same thing that has been audible in the Dutch musical landscape for a while now would happen: shuffling cultures. Taking inspiration from the rest of the...
It was initially spoken as a column commissioned by the Netherlands Chamber Choir (April 2015- premiere at Theatre De Harmonie Leeuwarden). Trip to Scandinavia is a variation on that in three parts. Now with animation. Also watch episode 1.
In 1989, the Holland Festival placed composers from the Soviet Union at the centre. The music of Galina Ustvolskaya and Sofia Gubaidoelina hit like a bomb. The ladies proved to be here to stay, although they move at two extremes of our perception of sound. Ustvolskaya pounds her message into our eardrums with monomaniacal drive, Gubaidoelina intoxicates us with mysterious rustling and whispering sounds. For me,...
Last weekend 250 years ago, nine-year-old Mozart arrived in The Hague with his parents and sister Nannerl. He arrived on 11 September 1765 to perform at the stadholder court. Due to illness, the Mozarts ended up staying for nine months and the young composer wrote several works here. Harpsichordist and conductor Jörn Boysen organised the festival Mozart in The...
'Young people can very well decide for themselves where they want to go or not go. And it just so happens that most of the time it is not to the theatre. So what? That will come naturally. Young people make their own choices, and that more often includes a house party than a play. Dragging them inside is counterproductive. And above all, no compulsory book-list performance,...
New: a veritable serial in words and pictures. Trip to Scandinavia was initially performed as a spoken column commissioned by the Netherlands Chamber Choir (April 2015- premiere at Theatre De Harmonie Leeuwarden). Trip to Scandinavia is a variation on that in three parts. Now with animation.
With the completion of the trilogy A Story of Love, Illness and Death, about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, a heavy burden fell from his heart for Swedish writer Jonas Gardell. As one of the few in his circle of friends, he escaped the dance of death. Pure luck, he says. 'I slept with death.' Also, the last...
Klem is the moving story of 11-year-old Paul, whose mother dies just after he refuses to lie with her for a while and runs out of the room. This makes him think he is guilty of her death. Interview with author Bas van den Bosch about his second novel. We are raffling off three copies! Klem The concise novel Klem has similarities with...
Ellen Vogel is dead, aged 93, and that is a loss. Calling her 'a monument' is an insult, so I won't do that here. Ellen Vogel was a regal actress, though: dignified and a bit posh. She was also someone who knew how to hide her anger sublimely. I experienced Ms Vogel a couple of times. The first time...
Yep, I'm running behind, because just now I finally saw (in parts) the King's Day concert! But hey, good music has no expiry date and for now this concert will be online for a while. What a party! Some of my favourite musicians participated. Faithful readers of Culture Press know that violinist and composer Oene van Geel is definitely one of them. He brought along Zapp4...
Is that possible? Picture-less film? Sure, just see-or better-listen to Chapman for President by the Eef van Breen Group on 2 May during LISFE: a cinematic sound project based on a personal story. An encounter with political refugee Chapman gave trumpeter, singer & composer Eef van Breen new eyes, ears and the idea for this film without images....
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