Anything for which people enter a stage.
'I always draw out my characters before I start composing. They are inspired by people I see on the street, personalities I admire, details that make someone special... I usually focus on one specific aspect of a character, a dominant mood that I then highlight in my composition.' Born in 1990 in Istanbul, Meriç Artaç was already...
Last Wednesday, 2 October, at the annual congress of the Vereniging Nederlandse Poppodia en Festivals in Tivoli/Vredenburg, I saw an interesting presentation by Jonas Kiesekoms, research coordinator at PXL-Music in Hasselt, Belgium, and musician. The question is now classic: can a robot replace the music programmer? With his research group, Kiesekoms is working on several applications that use data science to improve ticket sales for concerts,...
'Nothing can make up for the past. But the real, enduring power of the past lies in how it affects our present and our future. What we can do is shape a future history in which we consciously and determinedly carry with us only the best of our past.' Not keep rooting, but cognitive behavioural therapy for the whole of Europe, you might...
Ensemble Modern presents world premieres by German-Dutch Iris ter Schiphorst and Turkish Zeynep Gedizlioğlu in November Music. And that is good news, because the female composer remains too often invisible even in 2019. In the brochures of any Dutch orchestra, you will find none, or only a single work by a woman. On the new Heart & Soul list of...
Daan Manneke will soon turn eighty. On 5 October, this great purveyor of vocal music and 'chapel master of space' will take centre stage during a programme by the Groot Omroepkoor in Utrecht's Jacobi Church. For this programme, he composed the brand new Geistliche Dämmerung, commissioned by the AVROTROSVrijdagconcert. Even at eighty, Manneke is still all zest for life and energy. 'I continue to...
In 1988, Calliope Tsoupaki (1963) came to the Netherlands from Greece to study composition with Louis Andriessen. Exactly 30 years later, she was appointed 'Composer of the Fatherland'. In that capacity, she has already composed some highly topical pieces. When Notre Dame de Paris caught fire on 15 April, Tsoupaki immediately climbed into the pen. Five days later...
Boukje Schweigman's world is exciting, but never deadly. Whether she makes an experiential performance in a beautiful location during a summer festival, or takes a more artful approach in the plays she makes for theatres: you only see nice people. Even in Val, her latest. In it, we see a lot of nice people falling. Falling deep, sometimes....
Exactly 200 years ago, on 13 September 1819, Clara Schumann was born in Leipzig as Clara Wieck. She is among one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century. Against her father's wishes, she married Robert Schumann, whose work she fervently promoted. She also wrote well-received compositions of her own and was more famous than Robert. Yet after her...
For a moment, the envelope seems unopenable but then Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven conjures up the redeeming paper after all. 'The winner of the 2019 Gaudeamus Award is Kelley Sheehan!' The little American almost falls off her stool in amazement. Probably not entirely by chance, the new music organisation has positioned her right in the middle of her four fellow candidates. - She herself would...
There has been quite a lot going on about borders, lately. That is what authors Floor Leene and Greg Nottrot have created a play about, together with Wil van der Meer, Tijs Huys and Pascal van Hulst. Directed by Daniël van Klaveren, the Nieuw Utrechts Toneel (NUT) ensemble performs the play on the oldest border we know,...
Janine Abbring has managed to pull the somewhat ramshackle institution Zomergasten out of the doldrums. She has fun, is excellently prepared, is genuinely interested in her guests and has managed to push the eternal battle element into the background without making the broadcasts less exciting. That battle element was always: does the interviewer succeed in 'breaking' the guest? Because.
Police sirens sound less frequently in Groningen than in a city like Amsterdam. When they sounded last Wednesday night, it was because residents of the premises behind the local art academy, Minerva, raised the alarm. Standing on the roof was not an owl, but an almost naked man shouting that he was going to rob the Coop. Mads Wittermans, the actor in question, had forgotten the...
An artist creates something - but for whom and why? How does the created thing relate to society and what role does that creation want to play in it? Besides all the theatre performances at Noorderzon, there is also the critical question: 'What is actually the point of theatre?' Can art fraternise people? That's not so easy. Take theatre-goers. They are rather alike....
Dragan Bakema will play the lead role of Newton in David Bowie's Lazarus. Gijs Naber has been forced to hand back the role after coming to the conclusion that he has made too much hay in recent times. Gijs Naber: "In the run-up to the rehearsal period, I came to the conclusion that I have been making too much hay in recent years...
Some critics thought the opening performance of Festival Noorderzon in Groningen was so bad it made you cry. Others were less negative. Those certainly have a point. But then you have to look beyond what you are used to. When Bear, the hero of Noorderzon 2019's opening show, is imprisoned in a tower, he laments his fate through an eloquent yet sad...
'If we continue at the current rate, the fund will be exhausted in the foreseeable future.' This can be read in the 2018 annual report of the Performing Arts Social Fund. Plenty of reason to sound the alarm, indeed. Is this yet another victim of the cabinet's cuts? Not really, it turns out. When you look at the documents in detail, you see mainly that...
This is a letter sent in by Wim Claessen, who founded Boulevard in 1984, and passed the baton to Geert Overdam in 2002, who was succeeded by Viktorien van Hulst in 2014. "It is a disgrace that we are still standing here," spoke Viktorien van Hulst at the opening of Theatre Festival Boulevard at the Theater aan de Parade. "How...
Armed only with instructions, consisting of a short scenario and witness accounts from previous participants, you and up to 11 others carry out a number of sneaky tasks. On the street. Exactly what these subtle disruptions of the everyday are will remain a secret until the performance begins. It promises to be one of the most special projects at Festival Noorderzon, which runs from 15 to...
Theatre Festival Boulevard is a highlight of the festival summer every year. Because there are no barriers and because it carries the casual atmosphere of the city in every fibre. But it goes even further. Here are my seven learning moments: 1: Boulevard is more accessible than the city itself Some people find it verging on the hysterical, but...
When you make theatre for children and young people, you tell stories to children and young people from your adult existence as an adult. You can do that. You can get funding for that. Artemis, previously named the second-best theatre company in the Netherlands here, is such a company. But, because this youth theatre company is led by Jetse Batelaan, Artemis likes to do things differently. Stronger...
Miet Warlop has exciting ideas, and carries them out. Now she is not unique in that. More artists do that. What makes Miet Warlop special is that it invariably leads to really special work. Take her latest creation, to be seen at Theatre Festival Boulevard, 'Ghost Writer and the Broken Hand Brake': she puts three people on stage and...
Bossche Theatre Artemis is, after International Theatre Amsterdam, the best theatre company in the Netherlands. The company owes this to an illustrious past (Pauline Mol!!) and to Jetse Batelaan. This director recently received the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale for his disruptive oeuvre. This consists largely of performances in which children take power, without...
The central character in theatre-maker Marijn Graven's Lo Lie Taa was there early. At least, so he tells the mirrored floor and the audience in his monologue Lo Lie Taa. As a nine-year-old, he was already madly in love with his mother and not long after, his life was defined by pursuing as many splashy results of his...
One of the benefits of advancing secularisation is that beautiful buildings are becoming vacant in more and more places. You can do things with those buildings. With art, for example. So this week, Studio Orka from Belgium did something beautiful in the Maria Church in Vught. They turned the empty neo-Romanesque building into, yes, an empty church....
The Theater aan de Parade is slowly but surely starting to become the blot of cultural politics in Den Bosch. The outdated theatre has too low ceilings, too much plush, asbestos and past to still be a credit to the Brabant provincial capital. Viktorien van Hulst, director of the now 35-year-old Theatre Festival Boulevard, made a point of saying during her opening speech on 1 August that the...
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