The Royal Conservatoire’s Ensemble Academy will be performing compositions by teachers Calliope Tsoupaki, Aart Strootman and Martijn Padding.

Free entry, no registration required

Program overview
This year, the opening night of the Spring Festival will be dedicated to three composers, dear to the Royal Conservatoire. The Ensemble Academy will in fact perform a special and varied program, paying homage to compositions by Martijn Padding, Calliope Tsoupaki and Aart Strootman.

Virtuoso pieces, intimate and touching atmospheres, freshly composed music and home-made instruments: the opening night of this Spring Festival 2022, for the first time in the majestic Conservatoriumzaal of Amare, will surprise and amaze you.

The two virtuoso pieces by Padding Last Words (cello and ensemble) and White Eagle (violin and ensemble), which will also be recorded in a studio session in mid-April, will be performed under the baton of Gregory Charette; Classical Department students Yuchen Richard Zhang (violin) and Diederik Smulders (cello) play as soloists.

The touching composition by Tsoupaki Thin Air, an ode to compassion and solidarity composed during the Covid-19 pandemic, will be exceptionally performed on solo doublebass.

Strootman’s lectorate research on converging the two aspects of composing new music and developing (and building!) new instruments to play it, will find space to be performed in a composition for diamond marimba and tubular bells.

Padding - Last Words
Strootman - tba
Tsoupaki - Thin Air
Padding - White Eagle

Under the watchful eye of Slagwerk Den Haag, percussionists and composers will be working in teams on a new Konstrukt programme with the focus on experimentation and the search for new instruments.

Free entry, no registration required

Soundscape: Madame Jambon

Soundscape's performance Madame Jambon is a collaboration project between the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

This project is inspired by the famous Triadisches ballet by Oskar Schlemmer, a teacher at the Bauhaus. The participants of this performance are invited to design non-existing, wearable, musical instruments.

Participating KC:
Alberto Tombelan, Arefeh Hekmatpanah, Marie Lavie, Katherine Teng, Alice Hoi Ching Yeung, Carmel Freeman, Juan Montero Palma, Kirstin Norderval, Delara Navaey, Lai Keng Lam, Isaac Barzso, Liza Elizaveta Kuzyakova

Participating KABK:
Sarah Hoogman, Britt van den Boogaard, Juliette Hengst, Francisco Sebire Munk, Janīna Bahvalova, Tala Abdelhadi, Léonie von Saldern, Marie Lucy Vital, Daaf Brouwers, Myra-Ida Van der Veen, Elisa de la Serna Gallego, Anja Hertenberger, Paul van Blokland, Shelene Low Shi Ning, Lina Schweizer

Gratis toegang, tickets via korzo.nl

Program overview by Rose Connolly
'I grew up on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic or Ireland. During the troubles, from 1969 until around 1999, British military 'checkpoints' were situated on either side of my house, causing a great deal of indignation from Catholic families, like my own. The Troubles is the term given to the conflict between Nationalists (catholics) and Loyalists (protestants) in Northern Ireland. Nationalist activists demanded civil rights for housing and employment and in 1969, a march by a civil rights group was attacked by Loyalist hardliners and member’s of the B Specials. This would be the beginning of 30 years of war in Nothern Ireland, and 30 more years of division.

Over the past few months I have collected and recorded stories, conversations and 'ceili's' with friends and family from around the border that I grew up in, Newtownbutler.

This piece tries to delineate the unseen hurt and post-traumatic stress caused by the unfair treatment of the British Soldiers to Catholic families around the border, during the Troubles. Most of all, the piece highlights the obscurity and ambiguous nature of an 'invisible' border and what an immense trouble and impact it can have on the people living near it. This story not only touches on the historical but on the continuous influence it has - that is, until we see it go.

Throughout the piece, I, Rose, the creator will be present, by sampling and manipulating sounds through electro-acoustic means, from the recorded interviews, whilst also improvising Irish melodies composed in the locality of Newtownbutler.

The piece will be accompanied by moving and hypnotic images on all four walls on the room; capturing the invisibility of each border running through back-roads, lakes, valleys and winding rivers.'

Free entry, no registration required

Singers and young composers coming together for a programme comprised entirely of works for solo voice with accompaniment and for vocal ensemble.

Free entry, no registration required

Program overview
Vocalists and composers are joining forces to dive into new adventures in creative collaborations. Ten young composers and ten young singers created short pieces together, challenging and influencing each other, exploring a myriad of melodic, harmonic, linguistic, visual and theatrical ideas. Come join us!

The Student Concerts offer students from the composition department the opportunity to perform a piece on which they have been working individually and are not part of any project.

The result is a rich programme with a wide variety of pieces, from solo pieces to multimedia pieces, and from instrumental music to electronic music.

Following the success of last year’s ‘Wagenaar-Janssen Express,’ an evening devoted entirely to maestri’s piano oeuvre, the collaboration with the Royal Conservatoire’s Piano department continues this year with The Garden of Ryoan-gi, a retrospective of almost the complete piano (keyboard) oeuvre of the late Louis Andriessen, who died last year. As well as key works such as Trepidus and Image de Moreau, many of Andriessen’s less well-known short works will be performed by the students of the Piano department. A highlight of the programme is a unique performance of De Staat, an overwhelming composition for two pianos, by Gerard Bouwhuis and Ellen Corver. There has never been an official publication of this piece, which was created by alumni Gerard Bouwhuis and Cees van Zeeland and formally approved by the maestro.

Free entry, no registration required

Programme
16.30 -17.00: Recplay
17:00 - 17.30: Inhale by Simon Barette
17.30 - 18.00: Phosphene by Armand Lesecq

Recplay:
Since 2001, RecPlay is the ArtScience improvisation ensemble. By use of conventional and unconventional instruments, RecPlay addresses improvisation structures, noise art, feedback in image and sound, real-time composition systems, spatial compositions, play and listening.

Inhale by Simon Barette:
Inhale is a kinetic and sound sculpture acting as a sensing catalyzer. Originally inspired by meditative experiences, this object is using the inner choreography of aluminium’s materiality to give an insight into the psychological state that the practice of meditation can provide.

Phosphene by Armand Lesecq:
Phosphene is an audiovisual piece - a film for closed eyes - using a projection on the audience’s eyelids, a multichannel sound setup and a motorized hyper-directive loudspeaker. The project aims to explore varieties of inner spaces. Inspired by dreams, neurosciences and hypnosis, it tries to reach those liminal spaces between the surface of the senses and our interpretation of reality. On the edges of imagination, doubts, alienation or curiosity, the awareness navigates.

Free entrance.

Program overview by Rose Connolly
'I grew up on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic or Ireland. During the troubles, from 1969 until around 1999, British military 'checkpoints' were situated on either side of my house, causing a great deal of indignation from Catholic families, like my own. The Troubles is the term given to the conflict between Nationalists (catholics) and Loyalists (protestants) in Northern Ireland. Nationalist activists demanded civil rights for housing and employment and in 1969, a march by a civil rights group was attacked by Loyalist hardliners and member’s of the B Specials. This would be the beginning of 30 years of war in Nothern Ireland, and 30 more years of division.

Over the past few months I have collected and recorded stories, conversations and 'ceili's' with friends and family from around the border that I grew up in, Newtownbutler.

This piece tries to delineate the unseen hurt and post-traumatic stress caused by the unfair treatment of the British Soldiers to Catholic families around the border, during the Troubles. Most of all, the piece highlights the obscurity and ambiguous nature of an 'invisible' border and what an immense trouble and impact it can have on the people living near it. This story not only touches on the historical but on the continuous influence it has - that is, until we see it go.

Throughout the piece, I, Rose, the creator will be present, by sampling and manipulating sounds through electro-acoustic means, from the recorded interviews, whilst also improvising Irish melodies composed in the locality of Newtownbutler.

The piece will be accompanied by moving and hypnotic images on all four walls on the room; capturing the invisibility of each border running through back-roads, lakes, valleys and winding rivers.'

Free entry, no registration required

The festival concludes with a thrilling concert by the New European Ensemble, a regular partner of the Composition department, with new works by students.

Free entry, no registration required

Capping it all, master improviser Guus Janssen, who is retiring as a teacher, will be appearing at the after-party with the new DJ duo called De Grove Korrel that he has formed with alumnus Huib Emmer.

Free entry, no registration required