Andrea Vanzo

Joep Beving & Maarten Vos - Amsterdam Dance Event

Pianist Joep Beving and cellist Maarten Vos have announced details of their first collaborative album, vision of contentment, which will be released by Nils Frahm’s LEITER label and arrives on July 19, 2024. It follows work together on 2019’s Henosis, Beving’s third album, which came about after the two musicians shared a bill in Amsterdam in 2018. Mixed by Frahm at LEITER studio in the German capital’s famed Funkhaus complex, where Vos also has his studio, the LP contains eight brand new compositions and will be available on vinyl as well as via all digital platforms. It’s preceded by a single, ’02:07’, on May 31, 2024.While Beving’s never recorded an entire album with another artist before, Vos has regularly engaged in such activities, sharing credits with artists such as Julianna Barwick, Nicolas Godin (AIR) and Alex Smoke. “Occasionally I come across artists with whom I share a musical connection, leading to a mutual desire to collaborate,” Vos explains. “Exploring different creative approaches and learning from their workflows has been inspiring, contributing greatly to my development.”For Beving, it was a natural step to take, and arguably overdue. “Doing an album from scratch as a joint project was something Maarten and I wanted to try for a while now,” he says. “When my deal came to an end, we saw an opportunity to start making music. I’m always trying to create small worlds for the listener to temporarily live in. Working with Maarten and Nils has helped immensely in achieving this. Maarten is a sculptor of sound and Nils is, well...the master of sound!”Most of vision of contentment was written and recorded during July, 2023, after Beving and Vos unpacked their gear – recording equipment, various synths, a cello – to join the upright piano awaiting them in de berenpan, a shed hidden away in the forest outside Bilthoven, a small village in the Dutch province of Utrecht. The friends had already spent time together in Beving’s Amsterdam studio as well as Vos’ Funkhaus setup, sessions from which two further album tracks are taken, but their week in the countryside would prove particularly fruitful, if for uncomfortably poignant reasons. Out of their sometimes-sombre work emerged a universal eulogy to what the pianist calls “Finding comfort in the acceptance of the inevitable,” but the album represents far more than this. It’s also an astonishing personal tribute to Mark Brounen, their friend and, in Beving’s case, manager.Vos considers the haunting sounds of vision of contentment “a sonic landscape that encourages imaginative exploration”, and the duo talk of Morten Feldman as a musical guide, and Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto as ‘mentors’. Beving, meanwhile, says he intends to leave listeners with a simple sense of love, adding that he hopes it will also enable “a search for harmony and understanding” that also delivers “a big fuck you to fascists and fear!”

XA4 – Amsterdam Dance Event

Joep Beving & Maarten Vos - Amsterdam Dance Event

Pianist Joep Beving and cellist Maarten Vos have announced details of their first collaborative album, vision of contentment, which will be released by Nils Frahm’s LEITER label and arrives on July 19, 2024. It follows work together on 2019’s Henosis, Beving’s third album, which came about after the two musicians shared a bill in Amsterdam in 2018. Mixed by Frahm at LEITER studio in the German capital’s famed Funkhaus complex, where Vos also has his studio, the LP contains eight brand new compositions and will be available on vinyl as well as via all digital platforms. It’s preceded by a single, ’02:07’, on May 31, 2024.While Beving’s never recorded an entire album with another artist before, Vos has regularly engaged in such activities, sharing credits with artists such as Julianna Barwick, Nicolas Godin (AIR) and Alex Smoke. “Occasionally I come across artists with whom I share a musical connection, leading to a mutual desire to collaborate,” Vos explains. “Exploring different creative approaches and learning from their workflows has been inspiring, contributing greatly to my development.”For Beving, it was a natural step to take, and arguably overdue. “Doing an album from scratch as a joint project was something Maarten and I wanted to try for a while now,” he says. “When my deal came to an end, we saw an opportunity to start making music. I’m always trying to create small worlds for the listener to temporarily live in. Working with Maarten and Nils has helped immensely in achieving this. Maarten is a sculptor of sound and Nils is, well...the master of sound!”Most of vision of contentment was written and recorded during July, 2023, after Beving and Vos unpacked their gear – recording equipment, various synths, a cello – to join the upright piano awaiting them in de berenpan, a shed hidden away in the forest outside Bilthoven, a small village in the Dutch province of Utrecht. The friends had already spent time together in Beving’s Amsterdam studio as well as Vos’ Funkhaus setup, sessions from which two further album tracks are taken, but their week in the countryside would prove particularly fruitful, if for uncomfortably poignant reasons. Out of their sometimes-sombre work emerged a universal eulogy to what the pianist calls “Finding comfort in the acceptance of the inevitable,” but the album represents far more than this. It’s also an astonishing personal tribute to Mark Brounen, their friend and, in Beving’s case, manager.Vos considers the haunting sounds of vision of contentment “a sonic landscape that encourages imaginative exploration”, and the duo talk of Morten Feldman as a musical guide, and Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto as ‘mentors’. Beving, meanwhile, says he intends to leave listeners with a simple sense of love, adding that he hopes it will also enable “a search for harmony and understanding” that also delivers “a big fuck you to fascists and fear!”

XA4 – Amsterdam Dance Event

LudoWic – Amsterdam Dance Event

It goes without saying that The Concertgebouw and jazz & pop music make a perfect combination. The stages of both the Main Hall and the Recital Hall have borne witness to nearly the whole of jazz history. Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald have both performed here, as have Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. Famous pop stars and bands that have graced the stage of the Main Hall include Frank Zappa, the Doors and the Eagles, to name but a few. Legendary concerts, in the present as well as the past.

Owen Pallett

Martin Kohlstedt

It goes without saying that The Concertgebouw and jazz & pop music make a perfect combination. The stages of both the Main Hall and the Recital Hall have borne witness to nearly the whole of jazz history. Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald have both performed here, as have Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. Famous pop stars and bands that have graced the stage of the Main Hall include Frank Zappa, the Doors and the Eagles, to name but a few. Legendary concerts, in the present as well as the past.

Hania Rani & Ensemble

Hania Rani is an award-winning pianist, composer and singer. Her debut album “Esja”, a beguiling collection of solo piano pieces on Gondwana Records was released to international acclaim in 2019, earning Rani four prestigious Fryderyk Awards including “Best Debut Album”, “Best Alternative Album” and “Best New Arrangement”, in recognition from the Polish music industries very own Grammys.Her follow-up sophomore album, the expansive, cinematic, “Home”, was released in 2020 on Gondwana Records and finds Rani expanding her palate: adding vocals and subtle electronics to her music as well as being accompanied by bassist Ziemowit Klimek and drummer Wojtek Warmijak. The album earned Rani another notable accolade of “Best Composer”, a further acknowledgement from Fryderyk and with Rough Trade including it in their essential “Albums of the Year”.When Hania reintroduced herself this spring with “Hello”, the preliminary taster for her new album, “Ghosts”, it most likely startled many who’ve come to love her work. Otherworldly yet upbeat, its mischievous melody, eloquent Rhodes piano, sparkling synths and nimble rhythms offered little indication of the New Classical style with which her acclaimed solo debut, 2019’s Esja, is sometimes associated. Both a welcome to Ghosts’ universe and a farewell of sorts to the past, “Hello” is a siren’s call, and, just as the album’s title suggests, over the album’s 13 tracks and 67 minutes Rani passes repeatedly and gracefully between worlds, joined sometimes by bassist and Moog player Ziemowit Klimek and Patrick Watson who breathes unearthly life into the ethereal “Dancing with Ghosts”.Rani, who grew up in Gdansk, Poland and currently divides her time between Warsaw and Berlin, is probably still best known for Esja, its instrumental piano pieces swiftly and widely embraced during the pandemic for a palliative beauty which BBC Radio 4’s Mark Coles described as “sublime and minimalist”. Her Covid era “Live from Studio S2″ performance video has now clocked up almost 6 million views. Nonetheless, she’s always embraced broad horizons, far broader than her strict, two-decade training as a pianist might initially suggest. Alongside her classical activities, most notably award-winning collaborations with cellist Dobrawa Czocher (released via Deutsche Grammophon), not to mention her first piano concerto, “For Josima”, premiered this spring, she was for a while one half of Poland’s respected alternative pop duo Tęskno. She’s also worked with other media, releasing a ‘highlights’ reel, “Music for Film and Theatre”, in 2021, and her scores include Piotr Domalewski’s “I Never Cry”, winner of the 2020 Polish Film Festival’s Best Score award, last year’s “Venice – Infinitely Avantgarde” and, coming later this year, Amazon’s “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart”. In 2022, Hania was asked by director Susanna Fanzun to score the documentary about the artist Alberto Giacometti. Released by Gondwana Records, the soundtrack was recorded in the Swiss mountains with Hania being surrounded by snow and ice which is reflected in the delicate recordings.Her interests extend, too, into the realms of art: last summer, for instance, visitors to Zodiak, the Warsaw Architecture Pavilion, are encouraged to enjoy “Room for Listening”, a sound and spatial art installation, designed with architecture studio Zmir, in which an hour-long composition is looped and streamed through 25 speakers.Presented by Ambitus

LudoWic

Andrea Chenier

It is the summer of 1789. A festivity is being prepared in the castle of Countess de Coigny. Charles Gérard, a servant of the Countess´ voices his hatred of the French aristrocracy´s decadence. His aged Father is forced to labour all day long and Gérard himself leads the undignified life of a lackey. Moreover, he is secretly and unhappily in love with Madeleine de Coigny, the daughter of the House with whom he was raised. The political situation is very tense. When the visitors attending the ball finally arrive, they try to distract themselves from the disquieting news from Paris with the help of arcadian idylls and games. The young poet André Chénier is among the guests. Madeleine requests him to recite a poem. He sings of love and laments the injustice of the powers that be in such a convincing manner that Madeleine is deeply moved and forced to quit the room. The doors are suddely opened and a mob of irate people led by Gérard shocks the ball guests. However, the Countess manages to pacify and disperse the mob. The dancing continues. It is five years later and nobody is dancing. Paris trembles under the regime of Robespierre. Gérard has been elected prosecutor at the revolutionary tribunal, the impoverished Madeleine lives in Paris, supported by Bersi, her former maid, who now works as a courtesan. Chenier is being persecuted due to his poems against Robespierre´s regime of terror. Although his friend Roucher entreats him to leave Paris, he refuses as he has fallen in love with an unknown woman who secretly corresponds through letters. The unknown woman is no other than Madeleine. When the two meet and confess their feelings during a nocturnal rendez-vous, they are surprised by Gérard who has been looking for Madeleine with the help of his spies. Gérard and Chénier fight and Gérard is wounded. Gérard implores his rival to flee with Madeleine and guard her safety. At a revolutionary tribunal meeting he later signs the prosecution warrant against Chénier, whom he ...