News
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!
02.08.2018 South Africa with Asko|Schönberg
Last month I had the pleasure of joining the Asko|Schönberg ensemble for 4 performances at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda, South Africa.
The title of the performance was “Circus Schönberg” and was a rollicking ride through music of the 20th century with a tight group of 4 musicians, including myself. Apart from the fun of playing with the ensemble, getting to play a few solo numbers and also seeing South Africa again for the first time in 11 years, it was also great to see how well the music was received. I’m very proud to share this review of one of our performances which also mentions my solo performance of Tom Johnson’s “Failing” as a highlight!
28.02.2018 Contrabass Conversations
This month I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jason Heath for his fantastic Contrabass Conversations podcast! Contrabass Conversations has existed for years and I’m definitely honoured to be featured in an episode! Listen to the episode here! :)
