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News about events and festivals, backed by the industry but independent in content. Find out more: info@cultureelpersbureau.nl

November Music 2024: 8 to 17 November in 's-Hertogenbosch

With a large number of composition commissions and some 100 concerts, the 32nd edition of November Music shows how diverse and vital cutting-edge music is. November Music 2024 will take place from 8 to 17 November at various locations in 's-Hertogenbosch. Two top Dutch orchestras, Concertgebouw Orchestra and Radio Philharmonic Orchestra are coming to the festival for the first time and there are... 

Marieke Hopman new artistic director November Music

Marieke Hopman will be appointed November Music's new artistic director from 1 August 2024. She succeeds Bert Palinckx, who has been associated with the festival since 1999. Together with business director Theo van Dooremalen, Hopman will form November Music's board of directors. 'We are very happy with Marieke's arrival,' says board chairman Karen Neervoort. 'She has a lot of... 

Holland Festival 2024 concluded with successful 24-hour The Second Woman 

The 77th edition of the Holland Festival closed on 29 June with a minute-long standing ovation for Georgina Verbaan who showed a phenomenal acting performance in the The Second Woman, a performance by Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, in which she played the same break-up scene for a full 24 hours with a hundred most non-professional counterparts. The day before, Victor Pilon closed... 

Stage photo Second Woman by Heidrun Lohr

Rineke Dijkstra captures 24-hour theatre marathon with Georgina Verbaan  

Today, the Holland Festival presents the groundbreaking performance The Second Woman by Australian theatre-makers Anna Breckon and Nat Randall. In this theatre marathon, actress Georgina Verbaan plays the same break-up scene no less than 100 times over the course of 24 hours, each time with a different opponent. This extraordinary performance will take place on the stage of ITA (Internationaal Theater Amsterdam) and will be streamed live at Pathé... 

The Romeo. © Orpheas Emirzas

Trajal Harrell's The Romeo is the laid-back performance you need right now @Holland Festival. 

"I didn't hear a song I didn't know." Over white wine after Trajal Harrell's The Romeo, the lady was quite grumpy. I might add that I hadn't seen a move I couldn't have made myself. And yet that did not make me cranky. On the contrary: rarely have I been so happy and relaxed... 

Once maligned Brazilian hero Verocai conquers the Holland Festival.

This is what charisma looks like. Arthur Verocai, now 79, tall and lean, stylish jacket around bony shoulders, only has to look into the hall once to overwhelm the audience. In the Concertgebouw's main hall on Tuesday night, the Brazilian legend stood in front of the Metropole Orchestra to belt out work from his scarce albums. He hardly needed to... 

Image from Sisyphe. © Louis-Daniel Vallée

Hear what Maaike Muis experienced from a man moving sand at the Holland Festival

One of the lesser-known and therefore hidden gems of this Holland Festival can be found in the Transformatorhuis of Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek. In that space, a single artist spends six hours every day shovelling 40 tonnes of sand from one pile to another. It sounds strange, but those who are there make something very special 

Katia Ledoux in Carmen. © Inés Manai

Carmen adaptation by Wu Tsang shows how to combine respect and topicality

Probably the most famous murder of a woman for what she is is that of the fictional Carmen, a free-spirited young Spanish woman with a fear of commitment. Opera composer Georges Bizet immortalised this character from a French story by Prosper de Merimée, making the crime of passionel a common term for what is none other than femicide. That habit of men killing women... 

Eleven thousand strings in a round temple: Holland Festival highlight, but also missed opportunity?

Jet fighters, drones, thunderstorms with accompanying flooding and lovely babbling brooks with the occasional bird in a pine tree. All of Austria descended on the Gashouder at Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek grounds this weekend and it is what it promised: spectacle as only Austrian music spectacle can be. Georg Friedrich Haas's work 11000 Saiten is a great superlative: surround with emdr and... 

Melencolia by Ensemble Modern at Holland Festival: Unreal music theatre about the end of everything

Future health minister and deputy prime minister Fleur Agema graduated as an architect early this century with a study on the ideal prison. Artist Jonas Staal re-examined her graduation design a few years ago. Agema appears to have an extremely dystopian vision of the world in which prisoners and guards must pass through a disorienting, inky-black, concrete hell to... 

Boulevard on the Parade

Announcement full programme 40th Boulevard

The full programme of the anniversary edition of Theatre Festival Boulevard goes online today at noon. Regular ticket sales start Tuesday 25 June at noon. Friends of Boulevard can buy tickets as early as today. At the same time, the free Boulevard Magazine No 2 will be published, again with many background articles and interviews. Experiencing together Experiencing a spectacle together, which only exists in... 

Dying drummer says it all in Tiago Rodrigues' Dans la Mesure de l'Impossible at the Holland Festival

Live music in the theatre, I long for it more and more. Performances in which actors are accompanied by a soundtrack, amplified with or without transmitter microphones, always only half captivate. You soon find yourself watching a kind of live performed film. But without the comfort of a cinema and the technical capabilities of the camera.... Sunday 9 June sat in... 

Dystopia wins Delft Fringe Festival Audience Award 2024

In an almost sold-out final weekend, they played the halls flat Delft, Sunday 9 June, 2024 - After two weeks full of special encounters, touching words, impressive moves, little learning moments - or, on the contrary, great ones - and hilarious moments of laughter, it is over. Delft Fringe Festival, the festival for new performing artists, announced the audience winner at the closing on Sunday evening 9 June: Dystopia with the... 

Music with balls for Beatrix at Holland Festival

Jazz-Rock, it still exists. In all those years of sitting in the theatre, reading books or listening to David Bowie or Rufus Wainwright, I had kind of forgotten about it. Music by real men, Heavy Metal for people who have studied for it, Gothic but with several conservatory degrees under their belt. Subtle chopping where the drummer's left hand is a 17/23rd... 

With Despois do Silencio, Christiane Jatahy commands deep respect at the Holland Festival

That's where Christiane Jatahy had me for a moment. When during her directed and devised story 'Despois do Silencio', one of the actresses falls into a Winti-like delirium, and her colleagues try to keep her from colliding unceremoniously with spectators in the front row, I briefly think it is real. That's how used to reality we are by now... 

Opening party Holland Festival drowns in Westergasfabriek

It was busy at Amsterdam's Westergas area, this Thursday, 6 June. Fantastic, of course, that not only do you have a couple of excellent running restaurants and clubs there, and the evening four-day march passes by while there is a big salsa party at the club near the world-famous Gashouder, but then it still feels a bit weird that the royal opening of the... 

Holland Festival opened in the presence of Princess Beatrix. 

Tonight, the 77th edition of the Holland Festival opened in the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix. In the opening speech, festival director Emily Ansenk said that "the world's most urgent groundbreaking performing arts come together in June in Amsterdam.It may be here in all its multiformity. If you are 77 years old, and have lived through all sorts of eras, developments and governments, then... 

Georgina Verbaan is let down hundreds of times by a different man each time during the final weekend of this Holland Festival. Photo Janiek Dam

The best chance of total bewilderment. Why you want to experience completely unknown performances at the Holland Festival.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Holland Festival had a reputation for being elitist. The festival, which was founded in 1947 to get the culturally starved Netherlands back on track after World War II, had a bit of that about it because, for a long time, "being elitist" was also completely... 

PR image Margarida Constantino

At Delft Fringe, living rooms offer the lowest possible thresholds for up-and-coming talent 

Twenty years from now, I can say that I saw Daniëlle Deddens play once before she was a world star. It was on a somewhat chilly Saturday in June 2024 in the storage attic of an old mill in the centre of Delft. I was with about 20 other citizens of Delft, who had paid a few euros... 

The makers who played at the Delft Fringe Festival opening. From left to right: Ard Kok, Remijn Weijdema, Emma Thomson, Mariví van den Hooff, Bob Donkers, Mystha Mandersloot, Oudail el Omari. Photographer: Sjoerd Derine.

Delft Fringe Festival: Especially in these times, listen carefully to what is really being told

Alderman Frank van Vliet: "Delft Fringe Festival contributes to happiness" Delft, Wednesday 29 May, 2024 - Tuesday evening 28 May saw the festive opening of the 13th edition of Delft Fringe Festival in Theater de Veste. Like all Fringe Festivals worldwide, the festival in Delft celebrates creative freedom. The festival helps today's creators to tell their stories and... 

campaign images

Ticket sales 40th edition Boulevard launched

For four decades, 's-Hertogenbosch has turned into a lively stage for inspiring performances and encounters for 11 days in August. Ticket sales for the first fourteen performances of the anniversary edition of Theatre Festival Boulevard started today for Friends (on Tuesday 28 May for everyone). At the same time, the free Boulevard Magazine 1 with background articles and interviews will be published. Celebrating man Since 1985,... 

Deepening programme during Delft Fringe Festival 2023. Photographer: Jurjen Bolsenbroek.

Performing arts and science go hand in hand in Delft

TU Delft and Delft Fringe Festival build bridge between young makers in technology and the performing arts Delft, Friday 17 May, 2024 - During the 13th festival edition of Delft Fringe Festival (28 May - 9 June), the performing arts festival is working in full collaboration with TU Delft. On 31 May, for instance, a group of TU students will dance at this year's... 

PR image Holland Festival

Brazilian vibes and groundbreaking performances at Holland Festival 

Three more weeks and the Holland Festival is about to start again! The 77th edition of the Holland Festival opens at the Amsterdam Gashouder on 6 June with Rite of Spring, a double programme in which Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps is the inspiration for a film by Greek filmmaker and visual artist Evangelia Kranioti. This edition's associate artist, the... 

Campaign image Tales of the Tinderverse by Sophie Willemijntje. Photographer: Anneliese van Buren.

Impact of new performing artists increases

Press release + programme booklet Delft, Thursday 16 May, 2024 - Throughout the centuries, creatives broke through many barriers and taboos with their stories. Anno 2024, this development within the performing arts is more palpable than ever. At the foot of this growing impact of creatives is the organisation of the Delft Fringe Festival. Which has been giving space to the performing arts for 13 years... 

scene image Hamlet by © Simon Gosselin

Timeless doubt in French Hamlet: 7 dilemmas for Christiane Jatahy.

To exist or not to exist, to be there or not to be there: the Hamlet adaptation to be seen during this Holland Festival puts the necessary spin on William Shakespeare's over-familiar 1602 play. Director Christiane Jatahy takes a female approach. Her Hamlet is not the young Danish prince who must avenge his father and has doubts. Shakespeare's Hamlet pretends to be... 

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