Old or new, classic or modern, minimal or world. Pop. Tonal and atonal.
Dear outgoing Prime Minister Rutte, Dear Mark, In my capacity as a self-employed person working in the performing arts, I am writing you this letter. This is my first letter ever about the situation of the cultural sector, culminating in corona time. First by way of introduction: we met when I played a Scarlatti sonata especially for you at the TV programme Podium Witteman, and also...
For the first time in almost a year, I feel like going to the theatre again. I am eager, soon, when the theatres are full again. That's thanks to this site's newsletter that I received in my mailbox yesterday. Until now, I was not looking forward to returning to a full theatre. Afraid of...
Maybe it's the snow, and my little dog that made me so happy. Maybe it's the sledding children in 'The Pit' of Lunetten, and maybe it's the lameness that creeps up on me after so many valiant attempts to keep up the fun of art in times of Corona. But I sat through the first minutes of VPRO's Onstage...
Listening away, does the word exist? I did it. And still do. For music. Just as you can look away from something, I listened away from the CD that was so thoughtfully sent to me. Here's the thing. This autumn, I received CD Wounds & Brutality through the post as a gift from Tom America- composer, musician, quirky creator. I've been a fan of America since 2011. He...
I understood the dilemma. If the violinist renounced her old violin she was acting contrary to her pure nature. It felt like infidelity.
Splendid Isolation is about the happiness of loneliness, but, Elgershuizen stresses, it is best experienced together. 'It needs to be performed, because as humans we need to be able to be together'.
If all goes well, it can be experienced on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 December.
Thirteen young composers have been selected for the Final of the Dutch Wind Ensemble's (NBE) composition competition Towards the New Year Concert. This Finale will take place on Sunday 20 December in TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht.
This video by Thomas Oliemans is really fun to watch, it lasts 1 hour and 14 min. That's how nice streaming can be. So much nicer when you are there!
From over 100 entries, 24 young composers have been selected for the semi-finals of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble's (NBE) composition competition Towards the New Year Concert with the grand prize of a performance with the NBE at the New Year Concert on 1 January (19:00 NPO 2).
Fortunately, the Groninger Museum also puts enough focus on the aural aspect; not only are visitors treated to the various Stones songs, culminating in the concert in Cuba in 2016, but they also pass by fragments of der band members themselves and (popular) cultural figureheads such as director Martin Scorsese.
After a two-week closure, TivoliVredenburg announces 100 new editions of the 'coronaproof' concert series Walk The Line in the months of November, December and January. Walk The Line is a unique tour of four venues in the Utrecht music venue.
The Dutch Wind Ensemble's (NBE) traditional New Year's concert at The Concertgebouw on Friday 1 January 2021 is going to look completely different from all previous editions. Because it is currently unclear whether, or how many, visitors The Concertgebouw is allowed to admit because of RIVM measures, the difficult decision has been taken to play the New Year's concert entirely without an audience.
Meanwhile, November Music is keeping its nerve: the management is betting on live concerts with up to 30 people in the audience. In an email update to press and public, she did express her concerns: 'It will be some exciting days. After next Tuesday's press conference, we will know whether November Music 2020 can definitely go ahead.
This year, November Music not only has a house composer, but also a house ensemble, the New European Ensemble. Naturally, the Hague club will play in the opening concert with Seung-Won Oh's Bosch Requiem. And, of course, they present a portrait concert with greatest hits by composer-in-residence Kaija Saariaho.
It is not only healthier but also more effective if, in our social institutions, we start making the transition from rigid control to learning processes and training sensitivity to the signals of the autonomic nervous system, the signals of safety and danger. It is relevant to embed this socially, for example in educational and care institutions.
The title YeonDo refers to a death ritual by which Catholic Koreans bid farewell to their loved ones. The play will have its premiere at the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center in 's Hertogenbosch on 6 November.
Polish-Dutch Hanna Kulenty (Białystok, 1961) writes music that gets under your skin. Whether it is early works like Fourth Circle for violin and piano (1994), the opera Mother of Black-Winged Dreams about multiple personality syndrome (1995), or more recent compositions like the Viola Concerto (2015) and her Flute Concerto No.3 (2018), irrevocably you are taken on an exhilarating journey with a...
The performance is outstanding, a lot of time has clearly been spent on it. However, this cannot prevent the performance from slumping a bit halfway through.
Pièce de résistance will be the brand new Reconnaissance (Rusty Mirror Madrigal) for choir, percussion and double bass. Saariaho composed it commissioned by November Music and the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The first performance was scheduled at the German festival, which, however, was also cancelled. - A stroke of luck for November Music.
The cultural centre of gravity in Limburg has been in the south for years. However, to encourage southern institutions to programme outside the region, only 1 extra point is available. Examples of the problem of geographical spread also exist at the Council of Culture and the Performing Arts Fund.
Anno 2020, Music Week is buzzing like never before. Even corona has barely caught on. How many 'Mozarts' have emerged by now I will leave open, but the rich and varied off- and online offerings create some choice stress. At 75, the organisation is younger than ever: Gaudeamus is the place to be.
In October, the Blazers and Bart Moeyaert will tour again with De Schepping, the first part of this successful musical theatre trilogy. During this performance, Bart Moeyaert (winner of the 2019 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the 'Nobel Prize for children's literature') tells the story using a self-written text to this old, but never performed this way, music by Haydn.
This year, November Music awards 10 commissions to Dutch and two to foreign composers, including a choral work for Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Traditionally, November Music opens with the Bosch Requiem on Friday 6 November, which of course takes on an extra charge this year. Korean-Dutch composer Seung-Won Oh draws inspiration from the YeonDo death ritual that links Korean funeral traditions with the Catholic faith. After Kate Moore and Calliope Tsoupaki, she is the third female composer of the Bosch Requiem in a row.
The NBE calls on young composers to write music about something or someone they want to stand up for, or even rebel against. There are hardly any rules, anything goes and anything goes as long as it is self-invented.
Things can change. In 1979, Iran changed from a Western-oriented secular state to a spiritual dictatorship, where Islamic leaders call the shots. Women must henceforth go through life veiled and music is banned as extremely sinful. Four decades later, three women founded the Iranian Female Composers Association. In America, though. 'Music is like a drug, those who feel...
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