This post has been updated following a response from VVD The Hague. Yesterday I wrote: But so that was misunderstood. Today the VVD called. A transcript of the conversation can be found below: With Frans Schuyt fraction chairman The Hague VVD. I think two things have been mixed up. You have the programme in the budget, Culture and Library, of 102 million,...
Berlinale 2018 opent met Isle of Dogs, een nieuwe stopmotion-animatie van Wes Anderson. Een door ruim zeventig Duiste filmmakers ondertekende open brief rakelt discussie over de toekomst van het festival op, nu directeur Dieter Kosslick in 2019 afscheid neemt.
Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847) was the four-year older sister of Felix Mendelssohn. They both received a solid musical education, with her surpassing him in virtuosity at the piano. Her relationship with Felix was intense, but also suffocating. At his hands, Fanny Mendelssohn failed to build an independent career as a composer. To this day
The neat couple next to me, in the front row at the Holland Festival press conference, hadn't counted on it for a moment. Four members of the Nederlands Kamerkoor starting to undress one by one down to their pecker-sized nakie. A giggle, a small cough, but hey, this is the Holland Festival, they said to each other. So too...
Bouke Oldenhof. Where was he all this time? Writing, but mostly in Frisian (which also meant he had no time to work on his website). And so you can't get through to the rest of the Netherlands. The man who won countless hearts with the unique gem 'Rolbrug'. Mine too, and...
William Kentridge and Faustin Linyekula. Remember those names, if you didn't already know them, because they are going to help shape the face of Holland in the coming year. They have been appointed by the Holland Festival as 'associate artist'. In doing so, the festival puts the phenomenon of 'artistic director' out of business. A necessary choice at a time when the price for that kind of figure is faster...
The 47th Rotterdam Film Festival opens with Jimmie, a flight story upside down. Director Jesper Ganslandt on filming with his infant son and the connections to his debut Falkenberg Farewell.
She is 14, heavily veiled and bespectacled, with a voice that can be heard in the farthest corners of The Hague. She wants to be a surgeon but first wins the preliminary round of the school competition for young poets at Winternachten. What anger there is in that person. What maturity sounds from her cry...
Leïla Slimani, de Marokkaans-Franse auteur die met haar roman Een Zachte Hand de prestigieuze Prix Goncourt in de wacht sleepte, heeft ter elfder ure afgezegd voor Winternachten. De reden was niet de storm van donderdag. DE reden was persoonlijk. Maar zou ook te maken kunnen hebben met iets anders. De hoofdgast van het Internationale Literaire Festival in Den Haag, Alain Mabanckou,…
First there was Kinder Matteüs: an interactive musical production with the Holland Baroque Society and the Nieuw Amsterdams Kinderkoor. Now The Dutch Junior Dance Division with the Matangi Quartet brings Last 7 Words to music by Haydn. You came to church every day, didn't you?" I ask Thom Stuart. No, the choreographer firmly denies. 'I never come to church.'
The best performers are a few heads taller on stage than in real life. This also applies to Carmien Michels. I knew the writer, performer, slam poet and jack-of-all-trades in cultural life mostly from her legendary performances at the 2016 NK Poetry Slam and the Night of Poetry in September 2017. Radiance and presence, which...
In the 1970s, a wave of terror swept through Europe. A wave that claimed far more victims in our regions than the Islamic violence to date. During literature festival Winternachten, from 18 to 22 January in The Hague, it is about the struggle for freedom, about us against them. On Saturday afternoon 21 January, Frank Westerman and Mohsin Hamid will discuss the...
The string quartet is considered Joseph Haydn's invention; Goethe considered it the nec plus ultra of instrumental music. 'One hears four intelligent people conversing with each other' said the poet. 'One believes to understand something of their conversation and to know the idiosyncrasies of the instruments.' We get plenty of that opportunity from 27 January to 3 February, during...
Well, we're not big on hypes and traditions here, but still. The dark days around Christmas are very dark this year, so why not something with lists. This year, no list of toppers from the editors, but random entries from random readers, in random, if slightly alphabetical order. Motto of the reader question was: which things...
An ancient melody floats, crackles and drones through the town hall of Aarhus, Denmark. The city is close to being European Capital of Culture. That is why we hear the same song at the handover ceremony as when it was launched on 21 January. Then Aarhus celebrated the start of Aarhus, European Capital of Culture and 'Jeg drømte mig en drøm i nat' thundered through the Aarhus streets....
From 18 January, The Hague is all about Winternachten. In our opinion, this is the most fun literature festival in the west of the Netherlands. This year, it is about Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood, the motto of the French Revolution, among other things. But also about Karl Marx. Under the motto 'we the people', Winternachten is therefore about populism and secession,...
During the upcoming edition of Writers Unlimited/Winternachten in The Hague, two writers who are making exciting news with their work and their success will drop by. Fatma Aydemir, journalist from Berlin, wrote with 'Ellebogen' an abrasive debut about a Turkish girl who is a little less prepared for her future than everyone would like. Parisian author Leila Slimani won in...
Twee mannen. Niet eens zo heel erg gespierd, niet eens zo heel erg stoer. Maar wat een dokwerkers. En wat een eenvoud om iets heel moois te vertellen. De een rolt zichzelf op als een steen en de ander rolt die steen een berg op. Die berg bestaat uit podiumdelen die elk zeker een halve meter in hoogte van elkaar…
On Saturday 2 December, Australian-Dutch composer Kate Moore (b 1979) will receive the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize for her composition The Dam. The prize money is €20,000, made available by the Performing Arts Fund. The prize was established in 1972 and named after the Dutch composer and critic Matthijs Vermeulen (1888-1967). Until now, it invariably went to men, some even getting it two...
During the 11th edition of Utrecht's Le Guess Who? (LGW) festival, more than 150 acts from 34 countries found a home in the city of Dom in a long weekend. Fraternisation in listening manages LGW that may definitely go into the books as the best festival in the whole world. And for these five reasons. 1. The whole world comes...
As soon as I, as an art consumer, begin to suspect arbitrariness in the artist or his creative process, I drop out. Incidentally, this observation now surprises me. After all, I am no fetishist of form, nor am I a canon junkie, and I am not qualified in any of the standard artistic disciplines. Not a composer, not a performing musician and not an actor. Neither filmmaker nor director, nor a lyricist graduate....
A new generation of leaders in culture rose at the Utrecht Academy Building on Thursday 9 November. The 39 leaders come from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to Schunck in Heerlen and from the VPRO in Hilversum to the Utrecht festival Le Guess Who. In a year and a half, they discovered new working methods and formulated new vistas for the arts. That could ...
In een verloren uurtje de Cultuurvisie Amersfoort 2030 gelezen. Geen lectuur om op het puntje van je stoel te zitten, maar uitermate geschikt voor een treinreis. Ik ben het niet gewend om beleidsstukken te lezen. Het viel me op dat de toon van de Amersfoortse Cultuurvisie zelfverzekerd, doelgericht en vastbesloten was. Ferme taal. Geen ruimte voor twijfel. Ik vroeg me…
In February 2017, The Collective combined the radical music of Galina Ustvolskaya with the heavenly chants of Hildegard von Bingen. Less strange than it seems, as both were deeply religious and composed from inner necessity. On Thursday 26 October, Spectra Ensemble places Ustvolskaya alongside Karel Goeyvaerts at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Ustvolskaya is well enough known here in the country by now, but who was...
On the fringes of Amsterdam Dance Event, I saw two music documentaries that expose why this genre is often problematic for the cinephile. Both films have their fine moments, but ultimately fall short for those who desire more than mere information transfer in television format. A sympathetic Goth Are 'friends' electric? is title and big hit (1979) by British synth-pop pioneer Gary Numan,...
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