Residency of L’Anice hosted by Muze van Zuid Festival, in partnership with EstOvest Festival and DAS HAUS.
A letter by L’ Anice
Last week we had our residency and presentation concert in Amsterdam at festival Muze van Zuid. It was an exciting and inspiring week!
Our project was inspired by a medieval composition called “La harpe de melodie”, which we could define nowadays like a multimedia-composition: there are in fact visuals, music, text and a riddle to be solved to play the full composition. This work was made for the pleasure of the performers themselves, as described in the song text itself. With this idea in mind, we wanted to address accessibility in music and share the pleasure of listening, seeing and making music with the audience. The program was spanning from medieval and baroque to new compositions built around this theme. Each composition was complemented with a textual element, being a motto or a riddle.
©Kenny Nagelkerke
We experimented with various ways of audience interaction. Finally, we decided to create a "lottery" with the sentences connected to the music, hidden in a pot. The audience was invited to pick one out and read it out loud. In this way each piece that was performed was perceived as a "gift" or a "price" for the audience, and we realized that it did not matter if it was a baroque or a new composition, it was therefore also a nice way to introduce contemporary music to a new audience.
What was very special about the presentation, is that this simple game turned unexpectedly into a powerful tool for connection, it encouraged interaction between audience members and with the performers during the presentation. The audience members were glad to be in the spotlight when reading their sentence but also enjoyed suggesting the next player by caring for who was maybe more silent, or sitting at the back, or simply another person they'd like to receive this musical gift too.
The new compositions involved a recent work by Amsterdam-based composer Kate Moore and two brand new premières by Amsterdam-based composer Boris Bezemer and by ensemble member and composer Lorenzo Pandiscia. Here a few words form the composers:
- In Continuum, the harp and harpsichord are in motion around each other: one sounds on the beat, the other in between. This simple alternation forms a kind of thread the music spins around. Both instruments fluently transform roles, registers and timbre. (Boris Bezemer)
- A tutto il suo tempo is inspired by a motto from Gregorio Strozzi’s Elementoum Musicae Praxis. When I compose, I always try to search for something that is idiomatic for the instrument. For the harp there is this special effect that is the “tremolo” - and it’s somethig very magical - but it’s usually reserved for very small moments. So, I wanted to write a piece where the beautiful sound of the tremolo is the foundation of the whole composition. (Lorenzo Pandiscia)
Thank you Huib Ramaer of Festival Muze van Zuid for hosting our residency, Claudio Pasceri of EstOvest Festival for the coaching throughout the process, Sergio Roberto Gratteri of Das Haus for visiting our presentation and the constructive feedback.
Thank you Klaas Schraa for the beautiful harpsichord and venue, Matthijs van der Moolen for the beautiful video and Kenny Nagelkerke for the lovely photos.
Last, but not least, Thank you EFFEA for your support and for making this possible! 💜
©Kenny Nagelkerke