News
14.02.2019 Residency at the radio4 OpiumAtelier
Last week I had the opportunity to be the weekly artist-in-residence at radio4’s Opium Atelier.
Every week as part of the nightly radio programme, Opium, an artist is invited to spend the week in the Opium Atelier, a week that is then entirely at the disposal of the artist to spend on their work. Seeing as my project with neuroscientist and former athlete Beorn Nijenhuis, had just begun – a project in which my stress levels and practise regime will be studied for the coming months and later manipulated in the hopes
to finding what the optimal practise and time management methods are to better a musician – it seemed like a perfect opportunity to spend the week practising! So, armed with a schedule that Beorn had devised for me for the week, I spent my days practising, meditating and in general being much more efficient than I’m used to!
At the end of the week I got to discuss the experience with Beorn and Annemieke Bosman during Friday nights broadcast of the programme.
For more info on the experience or to listen to any of the interviews, check Opium Atelier’s site here!
01.02.2019 6 month practise project
Starting this coming Monday, my exciting new project in which neuroscientist and former Olympic athlete Beorn Nijenhuis will be tracking my practise time and using my biofeedback data to continually adjust my schedule will begin!
What should I do when it’s the end of the day, I’m super tired but I HAVE to practise? Why does the feeling of being unprepared not seem to always correlate terribly well with actually being unprepared? Why does it sometimes feel like 20 minutes of practise can produce better results than 2 hours can? When i have the luxury of a whole day free to practise, what is really the optimal way of setting that day up so that I get the best out of my time spent with my instrument but don’t feel so exhausted that the next day has to be spent doing nothing or in a constant state of fatigue? I’m so hoping to have at least some answers to these questions at the end of this six month period in which I will be working closely with Beorn and tracking my practise and schedule in its minutiae: equal parts terribly frightening and terribly exciting.
I got the chance to announce the project this morning on De Ochtend van 4 on NPO Radio 4 (listen back in this link) and this whole adventure would not be possible without the support of the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Marti Keuning Eckhardt Stichting, Stichting SEC and the Olland Buisman Stichting!
07.01.2019 Mittenwald International Double Bass Masterclass
Later this year I will be one of the teachers giving masterclasses at theMittenwald International Double Bass Masterclass from August 5th to 10th. I am honoured to have been asked to come and teach for a few days and am truly looking forward to the experience. I will be teaching alongside Jeff Bradetitch, Andreas Bennetzen, Alex Bayer and Alexis Scharff and more info on the masterclasses can be found here!
04.01.2019 Concertseries Waalse Kerk
I am very excited to be starting a small concert series next month in the beautiful Waalse Kerk in the heart of Amsterdam!
A series of three concerts, each on the first Friday of the month, the first concert will be featuring the James Oesi group: Olga Pashchenko on piano, Merel Junge on violin and David Kweksilber on clarinet and sax. We will be playing a programme centred around folk and dance music, featuring works by Stravinsky (Historie du Soldat suite), Milhaud (Suite) , Bartok (Romanian Folk Dances) and Janacek (violin sonata). We have arranged most of the works on the programme ourselves for this unusual setting and I am definitely looking forward to putting it all together on February 1st!
The second concert, on the 1st of March. will be with soprano Ellen Valkenburg, a programme of some of the most beautiful vocal instrumental combos of the last few hundred years, and the last concert in this trio will be on the 5th of April with Astori Amsterdam. Astori Amsterdam is an exciting new quartet that I am very proud to be a part of, bringing vocal music from around the world to the Netherlands. Astori will be performing a programme of Argentinian Tangos, translated into Dutch, and arranged for our combination of voice – Sterre Konijn, violin – Wiesje Nuiver, accordion – Vincent van Amsterdam, and myself!
For more info on the series and to buy tickets please click here!
02.01.2019 Nieuwe Noten
I am extremely excited to be collaborating with the Amsterdam Grachtenfestival, Gaudeaumus Music Week, and November Music for their Nieuwe Noten (New Notes) project this year. The project is a call for young composers to write new music for me to perform at each of these three important festivals. Composers (aged 10 to 35) have until April 1st to write a 1 minute sketch of what they would like to write. On February 9th there will be a reading session that interested composers can sign up for where I will be looking through sketches with the composers that are present! The project is very exciting and will result in around 3 new works being premiered by me at each festival! Watch this space as I keep you updated and please forward this on to anyone whom you think might be interested! More information on how to submit a sketch and the whole process can be found here!
