News
25.05.2017 Dutch Double Bass Festival first edition
What an honour and a privilege it has been to launch the very first Dutch Double Bass Festival this past weekend in the Hague! The very first Double Bass Festival aimed at a broader public of music lovers!
I’m still coming down from what a fantastic weekend it was, filled with inspiring performances by, among others Edicson Ruiz and the Bassists of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Gary Karr, Adam Ben Ezra, Joris Vanvinckenroye, Dominic Seldis and Wilbert de Joode! I’m excited to already start working on the second edition and want to say a big thank you to all who came out to this exciting event!
25.05.2017 NRC Handelsblad, Vrije Geluiden and Kunststof Radio
As part of the publicity leading up to the first edition of the Dutch Double Bass Festival, NRC Handelsblad wrote a very beautiful article about me and the festival. The first article that really captures what my current thoughts are on the instrument and my approach to music making, you can read it back here!
On the Thursday before the festival I had the opportunity to sit down for an hour with Petra Possel from NPO Radio 1 for a lovely interview for the programme Kunststof which you can listen back to here.
Dutch TV programme Vrije Geluiden also featured an item about the festival in which I gave an interview and got to perform with three other fantastic bassists, Arjen Leendertz, Eva Euwe and Cody Takacs!
23.02.2017 Dutch Double Bass Festival
Last week we announced the whole line-up and programme of the Dutch Double Bass Festival. I’m extremely proud of the line-up of musicians that we have coming and also extremely excited for the event itself! The festival takes place on the 19th, 20th and 21st of May this year at De Electriciteitsfabriek in The Hague, and tickets can be purchased at ddbf.nl. The line-up includes Gary Karr, John Patitucci, Dominic Seldis, Edicson Ruiz, and the basses of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, to name a few!
03.02.2017 Dutch Double Bass Festival – early bird tickets for sale!
From now until the 14th of February you can buy a discounted (!) ticket for the Dutch Double Bass Festival! The dates of the festival are the 19th, 20th and 21st of May and an early bird ticket will get you access to the entire festival (20th and 21st – the 19th is an education day) which will include more than 10 amazing double bass acts for €55!
The goal of the festival is to bring top quality music from the worlds best double bass players (from all genres) to The Hague for a weekend of celebration of the double bass! The first names that are announced are Minje Sung from Korea and Adam Ben Ezra from Israel.
I had the pleasure of seeing Minje play for the first time when I was still studying in Moscow, he was 17 and had just won the Koussevitzky competition. I was absolutely blown away by his recital and have followed him ever since!
Adam Ben Ezra is a an equally inspiring artist whom I had the luck of finding on an unplanned YouTube spiral (you know what I mean – the kind that begins by clicking a “related video”) that started somewhere with the Berio Sequenza. I came across his video of his piece “Can’t Stop Running” and again was absolutely mesmerised. He too I continued to follow and it makes me extremely happy that these two artists will be playing at the first edition of the festival!
There is a whole lineup of extremely exciting bassists coming to The Hague for the festival and the full line-up and programme will be made public on the 14th of February after which the early bird discount will end.
23.01.2017 De Nachtzoen!
To begin 2017 I was featured on a Dutch television programme called “De Nachtzoen” (The goodnight kiss). The programme which is on every night, features a short interview with a guest who ends their interview by putting the audience to sleep, either with a story or, in my case, a performance! It can be watched back here!
