What to expect from a 'musicabanda' from East Tyrol? Gemütliche folk music? Yodelling? Dance music for weddings and parties? An evening in a beer pub? Either way: definitely not Mahler. But why not, thought the Franui from the village of Innervillgraten. Result: an enervating performance around orchestral songs. We have never heard Mahler like this before.
There are those who spend nights queuing for a ticket. After all, the Berliner Ensemble is mythologically big. As big as the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, or La Comédie Française in France. Monuments to cultural history, dedicated to one writer, like Brecht or Shakespeare, or to an entire history, as the French are used to. We Dutch have
Holland Festival
Holland Festival
Seagull, an early play by Anton Chekhov, is about drama in the same way that his equally famous play Cherry Garden is about cherry growing or real estate fraud. Not so. It seems to be a mistake that stage artists often make and that Chekhov cites in his 115-year-old play: thinking that everything is always about you. Which is why Thomas Ostermeier, lauded German director, cannot be blamed for the fact that his direction of The Seagull at Toneelgroep Amsterdam is about theatre.
So there is figurative music. Music that, like a figurative painting, offers a fairly accurate depiction of reality. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo's composition 'Hurricane Transcriptions' is just such a picture:
Holland Festival
'The Pyre', the latest show from internationally rising star Gisèle Vienne, initially seems less disturbing than her previous work. Pieces like 'Jerk' (2008), based on the true story of a young serial killer, and 'This is how you will disappear' (2010), starring a dark forest, were only seen in a few places in the Netherlands. Hopefully, this performance at the Holland Festival will change that. Gisèle Vienne once studied harp, then philosophy and eventually trained as a puppeteer. But Vienne sees herself primarily as a visual artist working with time, on a stage, where different rhythms, motifs and figures come together.
Holland Festival
From the mild, everyday cacophony around the Muziekgebouw in the afternoon, on the terrace by the IJ, you'll get into the silence of the concert hall in a few steps. For three and a half hours (with over two hours of breaks in between), Asko|Schönberg, Slagwerk Den Haag and Capella Amsterdam will play and sing your ears off. Steven Schick (a.o. once Bang on a Can), not only conducts, but also takes charge of the middle part of the concert, at the Bimhuis, as a percussionist. Under his inspired direction, 'Nine Rivers' navigates between spectacle and purism: a battle between complex form and the simplicity of raw sound matter.
'That men and women in the Islamic world live apart from each other, that is a big frustration,' says choreographer Abou Lagraa. 'That is what El Djoudour is about.'
Because of his background, Abou Lagraa has a special, enlightening perspective on these issues.
Holland Festival
Amsterdam, 5-6-2013 - It is difficult to go uninhibited to a production that has already caused so much controversy as Sunken Garden by Michel van der Aa. This "first 3D opera" was slammed as "soporific" after its premiere at London's Barbican Theatre last April, but also hailed as "the future of opera".
Holland Festival
Forget all the fuss about the first-ever 3D film opera, forget all the fuss in British newspapers. Michel van der Aa himself sighed in interview that, on reflection, he would have loved to have made the second 3D film opera. And perhaps he had
Holland Festival
Benjamin Millepied is a glamour boy who conquers everything in his path: from actress Natalie Portman to the Paris Opera ballet. In reality, after the premiere in Amsterdam, the Frenchman looks like a
Holland Festival
They are gentlemen of age and therefore with a history. Grey or bespectacled or bald - or with a combination of all three. Their music has taken them everywhere. And now they are in a packed Carre: the Orchestre El Gusto. To their own delight, as they thank the audience for coming. The musicians from the kasbah of Algiers play the music as it is
Holland Festival
Our king is not yet known as a lover of culture of the less bite-sized kind. The kind of performances, like the opera Quartett, with which the Holland Festival opened on 1 June. So it may have been a bit of a letdown for him, his
Holland Festival
Holland Festival
,,The special thing about Quartett is that an intimate story between two people is blown up to impressive proportions. The characters find themselves in a room, which seems to float. In this seclusion, an isolated game between a man and a woman plays out. Giant video projections
Holland Festival
Simon Stone (28) wrote a new play based on Henrik Ibsen's 1884 stage classic The Wild Duck. The Swiss-born Australian provided the Norwegian play with entirely contemporary language and dressing. The actors sit
Putting a man and a boy on stage together - upper body bared; in today's times, that means asking for trouble. Our gaze, saturated by paedophilia scandals, leaves little in the way of intimacy between what could also be father and son, brothers or friends. But 'Victor' by choreographer Jan Martens and director Peter Seynaeve is no good, politically correct repartee. In their search for a loving look at the relationship between husband and child, they also consistently push the boundaries of what is permissible.
De Verleiders, last season's big theatre hit, heads the jury selection of The Theatre Festival 2013. The by a group of actors and cabaret artists, including Pierre Bokma and
On 8 September next, pianist, composer and conductor Reinbert de Leeuw hopes to turn 75 and this will be celebrated with a range of events. These include a three-day festival dedicated to him in The Hague and Amsterdam at the end of September, and next season he will be
Thirty-eight singing Slovenian girls. We might expect something with colourful costumes against a backdrop of a sunny village scene. Instead
Holland Festival ,,I like to use the word 'Gesamtkunstwerk'. Light, space, matter, body, sound: it all belongs together. Each aspect forms an essential part of the whole."
Choreographer Nicole Beutler prepares with pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama and
With Tragedy of a Friendship commemorates Flanders Opera the bicentenary of Richard Wagner's birth. It is a production by controversial artist Jan Fabre, author Stefan Hertmans and composer Moritz Eggert. When I approach the German tone poet for a conversation about this opera, he reacts with shock: there is ab-so-lutely no question of an opera! Could I please clear up this misunderstanding once and for all?
More than a decade without national pride does a lot to a country. Could it be true that the simultaneous closure of Stedelijk Museum and Rijksmuseum contributed to the
Friday, April 12, there will be a 'Film Summit' at Eye, Amsterdam. Government, producers and financiers will spend a day discussing what needs to be done to help the Dutch film industry get through the winter. This Film Summit came about at the request of
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