Peter van Bergen Presents

with the Artists

and through the Cooperation of the

LOOS/STUDIO LOOS

Zaal3

1st Annual

The Hague International Sound Art Festival

We Are Transforming Worlds

November 2 & 3, 2023

19:00 – 23:15

LOOS Den Haag & ZAAL3 invite you to the first edition of THE HAGUE INTERNATIONAL SOUND ART FESTIVAL!

It is a celebration of the limitless possibilities of sound as a medium of artistic expression. This immersive event invites you to embark on a journey through aural landscapes, where the boundaries of music, technology, and art blur into a tapestry of sonic experiences.

SOUND ART THE HAGUE

The Hague International Sound Art Festival brings together international artists for a thought-provoking blend of live electronics, live performances, human-computer interaction showcases, and interactive sound installations. Our light installations add a touch of magic, and you can even dive into the world of creative sound machines.

What Is Sound Art?

Sound art is a diverse and interdisciplinary form of art that primarily utilizes sound, acoustics, and auditory elements as its medium of expression. It breaks away from traditional notions of music by emphasizing the artistic and aesthetic qualities of sound itself, rather than focusing solely on melody, harmony, or rhythm. Sound artists often work with various sonic elements, including field recordings, found sounds, electronic synthesis, spoken word, and more, to create immersive and thought-provoking experiences.

Event Schedule

Thursday November 2, 2023

Location: ZAAL 3

20:00

20:40

21:00

22:00

22:30

"Complete artificial light and sound object show from the 60s to present day" by Willem Marijs

19:00 - 20:00

“A Song of Truth and Semblance” by Gilius van Bergeijk

“Symphony of a Thousand (alphabetically)” by Gilius van Bergeijk

“for siblings” by Lucie Nezri
Performed by Reinier van Houdt

“Énacteur” by Farzaneh Nouri
Performed by Reinier Van Houdt and Erik Boeren

“Elucidations to Self-Estrangement” by Tilen Lebar

“Evil Gaze” by Daniil Pilchen
Performed by Daniil Pilchen and Nirantar Yakthumba

Installation:

Location: STUDIO LOOS

Installation:

“Soaked To The Ears” by Ege Sahin

Friday, November 3, 2023

Location: ZAAL 3

20:00

20:25

21:00

22:00

22:15

22:40

19:00 - 20:00

“Private and Ideological Sewing Grounds" by Viktoria Nikolova

“What is beauty for you …… I know what it is for me sometimes” by Leslee Smucker
Performed by Codi Takacs

“Reading” by Leslee Smucker
Performed by Peter van Bergen

“IOM-AIM – HYPER WINDS” by Peter van Bergen
Performed by Peter van Bergen, Johan van Krei

“Buddies” by Kaat Vanhaverbeke
Performed with Leo Lehtinen (FI)

“I’m Sitting In Two Rooms” by Johan van Kreij
Performed by Johan van Kreij, Leslee Smucker, and Peter van Bergen

“Bloom” by August Franklin
Performed by Leah Plave

“Augun” by Fjola Evans
Performed by Leah Plave

“On Being Wrong & Exhalation” by Christopher Cerrone
Performed by Leah Plave

Improvisation
Performed by Leah Plave and Tiziano Teodori

Installation:

“Complete artificial light and sound object show from the 60s to present day” by Willem Marijs

Location: STUDIO LOOS

Installations:

“Bec0m1ng: A Speculative Exploration of AI Beyond Cognition and Towards Presence” by Farzaneh Nouri & Arash Akbari

The Artists

  • Kaat Vanhaverbeke (born 2000) is a young accordionist from Belgium, who is currently doing her Master of Music at The Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. Her focus in music-making is personal expression and authentic communication with an audience. She actively wants to involve space and listeners in musical experiences. As a versatile musician, she is open-minded toward new artistic experiments, always bringing her beloved instrument to the foreground. Besides performing as a soloist and in theatrical work, she is currently engaged in various ensembles, among which is the Spaceship Ensemble. Additionally, she works as a freelance composer – enrolled in a minor study program composition at the Royal Conservatoire since 2021.

  • “Buddies” (2018, Dutch premiere) was inspired by the expressive capacity and extremities of the accordion. The live and the electronic parts interact with each other much like two aliens with a complicated but extensive history. Distinct sections in the piece tell a part of the story, relying sometimes in gestures, melody lines, dynamic depth, or the endless range of colours.

  • Arash Akbari is a transdisciplinary artist, based in Tehran, Iran. His interest in dynamic art systems, human perception, nonlinear narrative, and the co-existence between physical and digital worlds compelled him to explore the fields of generative systems, interaction design, immersive technologies, and real-time processing.

    His music compositions investigate experimental approaches to sound generation, field recordings, acoustic instrumentation, digital synthesis, DSP, and noise to create immersive sonic environments that explore the agency of autonomous systems, audification, indeterminacy, memory, and the perception of time and space.

    His work has been presented in different festivals and exhibitions around the world, such as DOK Neuland, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Geneva International Film Festival, and more.

  • The installation tries to imagine another form of relationship between A.I. technology and the earth in which the aim is to reveal what lay in potential.

    A digital environment with a constant amount of matter is occupied by AI agents. They have to compete for resources while giving back the possessed matter to keep the whole ecosystem in balance.

    The real-time audiovisual piece explores the emerging aesthetics behind the agents' causal and probabilistic activities by making them expressive using audiovisual forms.

  • Danya Pilchen’s music is closely intertwined with his research into collective experiences of time in musical practices. Understanding time as an emerging property of consciousness affected by social interactions necessitates increased attention to the relationships between musicians and audiences in his pieces. To facilitate these interactions, he employs various compositional strategies and listening techniques engaging the materiality of sound. This practice revolves around Songs, an ongoing series of chamber pieces on which he has been working since September 2019.

  • EVIL GAZE presents one aspect of our research with Nirantar: the acoustic interactions between various spaces. The arbitrary scale of frequencies played on the harmonium is picked up by the microphone at a different point in the room and fed back into the space through the speaker. This way, whichever frequencies are stronger at that point will create sustained tones slightly different from the ones that Nirantar plays on the harmonium.

  • Lucie Nezri (FR/NL) is drawn to abstraction and simplicity. her work bridges different contexts and disciplines pertaining to musical composition, tuning theory, computer science, and, at times, choreography. She enjoys exploring probabilistic methods of composition in a diversity of ways, from pieces for computer and classical instrumentation to fixed media, multichannel compositions, and dance performances.

    She holds a Bachelor's in music from the Institute of Sonology, where she is finishing her Master's degree.

    Since 2021, Nezri has carried out her compositional activities at Studio Loos in collaboration with other instrumentalists and expands her recording/ sound engineering skills during concerts.

  • for siblings (tempered) is the first result of a long-term research revolving around Maghrebin-Andalusian classical music, specifically from Morocco and Algeria. the piece is scored but open in terms of instrumentation, as it may be played for piano and/or guitar, and durations, as no durations are provided to the performer(s).

    For this concert, the piece will be played solo by the pianist Reinier Van Houdt.

  • Viktoria Nikolova is a singer, performer and creator from Sofia, Bulgaria, currently based in the Netherlands. She obtained a Master’s in classical singing at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in 2017. She specialised in Bulgarian folklore singing as an artistic researcher during that time. She collaborates with various composers and ensembles in the Netherlands and abroad, often crossing between folklore and classical music fields. She is pursuing a degree in cultural sciences at Leiden University, where, she is a co-president of Kunstgang Commission gallery space.

    In 2019 at Grachtenfestival, Viktoria’s author performance, “Metamorphosis of a Female Character,” was awarded the Themaprijs and Oorkaanprijs. Between 2018 - 2022 Viktoria took part in the Opera Forward Festival, Westben Online Residency, and Plop Festival, among others. She was part of the internship program NKK NXT 19/20. Since 2020 she has been developing author and collective projects with artists and musicians in multi-disciplinary environments. Her work overlaps topics of, mediation in artistic processes and seeks liminality between digital and physical spaces interwoven with body and vocal improvisation. The main themes of her current artistic research are identity, and transnationalism in the Balkans. more info

  • Sewing, digging, ironing, digging, washing, digging, swiping, probiv. Where is it sewn, the barrier between private and ideological time, we are nostalgic for? What burden experienced time stitched to us?

    This performance is an ongoing exploration of everyday objects filling the memory of non-occurrence. Objects, which create points of contact between domestic and sacred rituals among people who lived under authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe. The continuation in its form focuses on the sewing machine as a tool for translation and mediation bringing the domestic in a new context. It translates suppressed inner worlds by sound mapping of a repetitive, durational process of piercing a fabric and recreating the way the soil is pierced and sewn in search of oil. The performance is originally lasting 4 hours and set in a time capsule, aiming to replicate a static moment in time of horror and misplacement.

  • Codi Takács is an American double bassist, vocalist, improviser, self-critic, and composer. As an ensemble musician, he has performed with Asko|Schönberg, Klangforum Wien, Het Metropole Orkest, New European Ensemble, and Doelen Ensemble as well as productions of ≪HEROÏCA≫ (Dan Tanson, director) and Once Around the World (Mike Svoboda, musical director) with the Lucerne Festival Academy Alumni. As a vocalist, she is active in both singing and song-writing, and in 2020, Codi released Music In Progress, her first solo album of pseudo-absurd self-composed songs. With a persistent passion for pairing the human voice and double bass in theatric performance, they have commissioned several works for solo double bassist/vocalist and authored The Double Bass-Voice: A How-To Guide. Additionally, Codi has been invited by the International Society of Bassists as a performer, lecturer, and judge of their composition competition. Off-stage, Codi enjoys designing T-shirts, long existential walks in the woods, and being blue.

  • Info coming soon!

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  • The Electro Magnetic Field Orchestra ELOMA by Willem Marijs creates and plays with the (electro static and) electro magnetic fields of fluorescent tubes and other radio and sound waves that are travelling through the air.

  • Tilen Lebar is a Slovene-Dutch composer, improviser and saxophonist. His work is circulating and creating a unique connection between memory, fantasy and the resonance of different acoustic spaces. Within the last decade, he developed a specific extended vocabulary for saxophone, electronics and other instruments that intrigue him personally.

    Moreover, Tilen aims to push the boundaries of what is yet known, extend the possibilities of a conventional instrument and create pieces that will create unforgettable experiences for the audience. Sometimes, his works provoke, grasping for the air without leaving a space for a second doubt or breath. Therefore, his music is described as raw, beautiful and austere.

  • Dedication to various preparations of the saxophone and thus the so-called alienation of the instrument brought me to clearly understand two things within the period of a decade. The sound synthesis, which occasionally refers to extra-contextual associations (e.g. saw, construction work, synthetic sound, etc.) has a certain possibility to be controlled through the technical aspect of the instrument itself (i.e. the pressure of air, half-opened keys, 'fake voicing,' etc.). As another, the physical preparation of the instrument actually causes the transformation and thus the change of the acoustical resonance of the saxophone.

    In practice, such an approach enables specific timbral changes on the saxophone, which occasionally acquires acoustic properties of other instruments such as flute, clarinet, trumpet, and others. One can alienate oneself from their own origin. Through the additional electroacoustic transformation, we can acquire an additional sound dimension that is somehow unrelated to the sound art itself and it reminds me of the watercolour technique, which causes shading and shifting opacity of the interweaving colour through a concrete physical gesture. A spectral approach enables the organic material, the eternal matter, which in its essence returns the primal reflection to the auditory site.

  • Tiziano Teodori, a musician and electronic composer, excels as a flutist and actively participates in chamber music groups and orchestras. Based in Den Haag, Tiziano holds a master's degree in baroque flute from the Royal Conservatoire and has pursued courses in the Sonology department.

    Their music stems from experiments in the intersection of synthesis processes and the manipulation of recorded sounds, exploring the infinite possibilities of sound behavior and space. Influences range from early music to contemporary experimental realms, including musique concrète, minimalist classical, 90's post hip-hop electronics, and free jazz.

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  • Peter van Bergen is artistic and business director of LOOS. He is a composer, improviser, interpreter and PhD researcher at the Free University of Brussels in the field of interdisciplinary experimental new music. He founded LOOS in 1982 and Studio LOOS in 2005. His research concerns "Improvisation, Interactivity, Instability: Artistic Transformations" (IOMAIM Research) in which improvisation between people is transformed into collaboration between man and machine. As an improviser, he worked with musicians such as Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton. As a composer he wrote for mainly the legendary LOOS Ensemble, various soloists, ASKO Schoenberg, the Volharding. He also worked closely with numerous composers and artists such as Louis Andriessen, Cornelis de Bondt, Huib Emmer, Martijn Padding, Gilius van Bergeijk, Guus Janssen, Paul Koek, Johan Simons, Krisztina de Chatel, Karin Post, Wim T. Schippers, Titus Muizelaar.

  • The IOM-AIM project aims to create an interactive improvisation machine that blends human improvisers with computers, audio-visual equipment, and sensors. It explores the fusion of music and technology through complex networks, investigating ways to turn unstable improvisation concepts into interactive interdisciplinary setups. This project enables human improvisers to engage in live dialogues with a multimedia autonomous improvisation machine that includes computers, speakers, cameras, sensors, and the internet to produce live performances. In IOM, all ensemble components communicate independently, involving the audience as "data input." Key themes include granular synthesis, generative algorithmic models, hyperinstruments, memory art, space exploration, and iCOT (interactive Cathedral of Thorns), with a focus on transforming the performance space.

  • by Leslee Smucker.
    Info coming soon!

  • Composition by Johan van Kreij.

    The work ‘…Two Rooms’ is an improvisation of two musicians located in two spaces that are connected together through the internet. Both an audio and video connection between the two spaces is realized, allowing the musicians to follow each other’s activities as well as to interact with each other. Microphones and loudspeakers are set up in each space, in such a way that feedback builds up across the two spaces. This work will have its premiere at the 1st Annual The Hague International Sound Art Festival and will be performed by Leslee Smucker (violin) and Peter van Bergen (saxophone).

  • Farzaneh is an Iranian musician, researcher, and sound artist based in The Netherlands. Interested in experimental approaches to sound, science, and technology, she explores various disciplines such as electroacoustic music composition, computer science, cybernetics, and linguistics. As tools in her artistic practice, she uses creative coding, field recording, live electronics, as well as acoustic and programmable instruments. Her recent pieces investigate complex systems, natural algorithms, and human-machine interaction. Farzané composes for live performances, interactive installations, films, VR and multi-sensory experiences. The focus of her current research is on artificial intelligence methods in the framework of live electroacoustic music improvisation.

  • The performance aims at exploring the sonic interaction between two AI-driven musical agents, trained to actively take part in computer music improvisations. The artificial improvisers interact with each other, continuously changing their environment and forming a perceived macro-structure in time. The causality and emergence arising from the interactions of these agents shape self-organising complex behaviours that can suggest models for novel sound compositions. In this piece, the same system, Ènacteur, expresses two different behaviors picked up from two different training sets.

  • The installation tries to imagine another form of relationship between A.I. technology and the earth in which the aim is to reveal what lay in potential.

    A digital environment with a constant amount of matter is occupied by AI agents. They have to compete for resources while giving back the possessed matter to keep the whole ecosystem in balance.

    The real-time audiovisual piece explores the emerging aesthetics behind the agents' causal and probabilistic activities by making them expressive using audiovisual forms.

  • Leah Plave is an American artist, who edges past the traditional role of a cellist, performing not only classical repertoire but jazz, contemporary, experimental, non-western, and early music. Leah has lived and toured extensively across Canada, China, Europe, and the USA as a soloist, chamber musician, and collaborator. Leah was a featured guest speaker for Australia's Curve Magazine Festival, the Berkshire High Peaks Music Festival, and a performer at festivals such as FIMU (Belfort), Thy Chamber Music Festival, The Banff Centre, Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, Garth Newel Music Centre, and Manchester Music Festival.

    Her academic studies concluded in The Netherlands, where she earned a Master Degree in baroque cello performance and classical cello at the Royal Conservatoire Den Haag.

  • The improvisations explore the depths and colors of the cello through the analogue modular synthesis process, experimentation with live sampling, timbre development, layering, minimalistic pulsation and abstract contest creation, and prepared cello.

  • Fjóla Evans is a Canadian/Icelandic composer and cellist. Her work explores the visceral physicality of sound while drawing inspiration from patterns of natural phenomena. Commissions and performances have come from musicians such as Bang on a Can All-Stars pianist Vicky Chow, Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.”

  • Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984) is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. Balancing lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling details, dramatic impact, and interiority, Cerrone’s multi-GRAMMY-nominated music is utterly compelling and uniquely his own.

  • Austin Franklin is an internationally recognized composer, sound artist, developer, and researcher. He received a PhD in Experimental Music & Digital Media from Louisiana State University in 2023. His interests include music involving process, slow methodical thematic development, and an attention to texture and form.

  • Ege Şahin works in composition, sound art, and improvisation. mainly via methods like sampling, field recording, and audio synthesis amongst others. Born in Turkey, a migrant in the Netherlands, he collaborates to and with various forms of experimental multi-media practices nearing the electroacoustic music spheres. His interests in philosophy, media and cultural studies often emerge in his works to engage with social-political matters he has made an issue of.

  • “Soaked to the Ears” is a MULTI-SENSORY_INTERACTIVE_AUDIO-VISUAL performance work featuring; spices, water, camera, underwater sounds, electronics, and a text-based narrative. It is the result of artistic research around the impact of the marine industry and the Port of Rotterdam on marine life, mariners, and maybe possibly on others, if any. Made possible with the support of Gemeente Rotterdam, Gemeente den Haag, and LOOS Foundation.

  • started composing short after his birth in 1946 and has not stopped yet.

  • 1. A Song of Truth and Semblance - Een Lied van Schijn en Weezen

    2. Symphony of a Thousand (alphabetically) - Symfonie der Duizend (alfabetisch)

  • Leslee Smucker (1986) is a musician utilizing violin, voice, synthesizers, electronics, film, and poetry. Her work focuses on ideas surrounding sound perception, phenomenological spatial relationships, anachronisms, language, and the human/machine relationship. Solo performances include The Scottish Library (presented by University of Edinburgh’s Cantos Project), the Andriessen Festival in Arnhem, NL, Project Audire in Portugal, and Interference Series in Flagstaff. For composition, she was awarded a commission from Gaudeamus for Michela Amici in 2022 for harp and transducers. She has presented her research at the 20th Biennial International Conference on Ninetheeth-Century Music in Huddersfield, UK, and given artistic research lecture-performances at Brancaleoni International Festival and University of Virginia. She is lecturer in music at University of Colorado Boulder. Fellowships include a Barnes Fellow in Philadelphia with artist in residence JACK quartet, as well as a fellow in Ensemble Evolution 2021 with International Contemporary Ensemble.

  • Info coming soon!

  • Info coming soon!

  • Composed by Johan van Kreij.

    The work ‘…Two Rooms’ is an improvisation of two musicians located in two spaces that are connected together through the internet. Both an audio and video connection between the two spaces is realized, allowing the musicians to follow each other’s activities as well as to interact with each other. Microphones and loudspeakers are set up in each space, in such a way that feedback builds up across the two spaces. This work will have its premiere at the 1st Annual The Hague International Sound Art Festival and will be performed by Leslee Smucker (violin) and Peter van Bergen (saxophone).

  • Johan van Kreij is a sonologist. His practice covers the fields of composing, improvising, making and executing in the field of experimental electro-acoustic music. Both working independently and in cooperation with various artists, he has been involved in a wide variety of projects in the field of improvised music, music theatre, dance, architecture and installation-art. His current collaborations involve the research into quasi-autonomous improvisation systems, the rethinking of generative synthesis models and the development of stepper-motor control approaches. Furthermore, he teaches at the Institute of Sonology and is member of the new LOOS Ensemble.

  • The work ‘…Two Rooms’ is an improvisation of two musicians located in two spaces that are connected together through the internet. Both an audio and video connection between the two spaces is realized, allowing the musicians to follow each other’s activities as well as to interact with each other. Microphones and loudspeakers are set up in each space, in such a way that feedback builds up across the two spaces. This work will have its premiere at the 1st Annual The Hague International Sound Art Festival and will be performed by Leslee Smucker (violin) and Peter van Bergen (saxophone).

  • Artistic research by Peter van Bergen.

    The IOM-AIM project aims to create an interactive improvisation machine that blends human improvisers with computers, audio-visual equipment, and sensors. It explores the fusion of music and technology through complex networks, investigating ways to turn unstable improvisation concepts into interactive interdisciplinary setups. This project enables human improvisers to engage in live dialogues with a multimedia autonomous improvisation machine that includes computers, speakers, cameras, sensors, and the internet to produce live performances. In IOM, all ensemble components communicate independently, involving the audience as "data input." Key themes include granular synthesis, generative algorithmic models, hyperinstruments, memory art, space exploration, and iCOT (interactive Cathedral of Thorns), with a focus on transforming the performance space.

  • Nirantar Yakthumba is a composer/pianist hailing from Nepal and currently residing in The Hague. Growing up in a Hindu/Buddhist milieu, many of their creative concepts are deeply rooted in their experiences and fascination with the diverse and profound philosophical and aesthetic traditions that evolved alongside these religions.

    Their work delves into the intricacies of sound geometry, the transition from a highly structured imagination to reality, as well as concepts like curvature, singularity, multiplicity, and the differential. Consequently, the performance of their compositions often necessitates musicians to meticulously calculate proportions, intervals, and gradations that may be unconventional in the realm of traditional music. For Nirantar Yakthumba, it's paramount to position the musician within perspectives that enable them to perceive, to hear, and to navigate the nuances of the desired sound, allowing them to find their own vibrant presence within the music.

  • EVIL GAZE presents one aspect of our research with Nirantar: the acoustic interactions between various spaces. The arbitrary scale of frequencies played on the harmonium is picked up by the microphone at a different point in the room and fed back into the space through the speaker. This way, whichever frequencies are stronger at that point will create sustained tones slightly different from the ones that Nirantar plays on the harmonium.

  • Eric Boeren is an improvising cornet player (recorded with the groups of a.o. Sean Bergin, Michiel Braam, Maarten Altena, Franky Douglas, JC Tans, Willem van Manen, Wayne Horowitz), and band leader (recorded with Eric Boeren Quartet, All Ellington, Boerenbond and Available Jelly). Worked and still works extensively with a.o. Han Bennink, Wilbert de Joode, Michael Moore, Peter Evans, Tobias Delius, Mike Reed, Michael Vatcher, Wolter Wierbos, Roscoe Mitchell, John Carter, Wayne Horowitz, Gregg Ward, Alexander Hawkins, Tomeka Reid, Jason Adasiewicz, Anthony Braxton, Misha Mengelberg.

    Dedicates his daily studies to slow practise.

    Wants to improvise as a composer.

    Wants to play written material as if for the first time.

  • This is a research project by Farzaneh Nouri.

    The performance aims at exploring the sonic interaction between two AI-driven musical agents, trained to actively take part in computer music improvisations. The artificial improvisers interact with each other, continuously changing their environment and forming a perceived macro-structure in time. The causality and emergence arising from the interactions of these agents shape self-organising complex behaviours that can suggest models for novel sound compositions. In this piece, the same system, Ènacteur, expresses two different behaviors picked up from two different training sets.

  • Reinier van Houdt started working with taperecorders, radio’s, objects and various string-instruments at a young age. He studied piano at the Liszt-Akademie in Budapest & the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He developed a fascination for matters that escape notation: sound, timing, space, physicality, memory, noise, environment – points beyond composition, interpretation and improvisation.

    He has built himself an unusual repertoire that consistently resulted from personal quests; from collaborations with composers & musicians, from research in archives, from the composing and staging of music-performances or from unorthodox studies of classical music, and from endless tape recordings he made since the eighties.

  • This is a research project by Farzaneh Nouri.

    The performance aims at exploring the sonic interaction between two AI-driven musical agents, trained to actively take part in computer music improvisations. The artificial improvisers interact with each other, continuously changing their environment and forming a perceived macro-structure in time. The causality and emergence arising from the interactions of these agents shape self-organising complex behaviours that can suggest models for novel sound compositions. In this piece, the same system, Ènacteur, expresses two different behaviors picked up from two different training sets.

  • for siblings (tempered) is the first result of a long-term research by Lucie Nezri revolving around Maghrebin-Andalusian classical music, specifically from Morocco and Algeria. the piece is scored but open in terms of instrumentation, as it may be played for piano and/or guitar, and durations, as no durations are provided to the performer(s).

    For this concert, the piece will be played solo by the pianist Reinier Van Houdt.

  • Leo Lehtinen is a composer and pianist thriving in collaborative music-making and challenging the separate roles of composer and interpreter, improvisation and composition, by applying wildly different composing and workshopping techniques in his work. Leo’s youth was shaped by classical piano playing and being a drummer and songwriter in bands. Since then, his music has been performed internationally at highly regarded festivals and events, such as November Music, TROMP Percussion Eindhoven, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra Summer festival, and Kitara Nova festival. Leo obtained his BMus in Composition with the support of Mosco Carner scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and Master of Music in Composition at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag.

  • “Buddies” (2018, Dutch premiere) was inspired by the expressive capacity and extremities of the accordion. The live and the electronic parts interact with each other much like two aliens with a complicated but extensive history. Distinct sections in the piece tell a part of the story, relying sometimes in gestures, melody lines, dynamic depth, or the endless range of colours.

LOOS is both a performers’ lab and a foundation known as the LOOS foundation. It explores innovative performing techniques, bridging traditional instruments with cutting-edge technology.

These disciplines are subject to separate or combined exploration, both in relation to production and presentation, emphasizing reflection on practice and aesthetic expression as a whole.

Studio LOOS, established in 2005, serves as a hub for experimental music and artistic research in The Hague, The Netherlands.

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LOOS Foundation activities are made bpossible with the support by De Gemeente Den Haag.

Zaal 3 is the smallest and most surprising theatre of Het Nationale Theater, situated right next to Studio LOOS, the DCR studio's and art space Nest. Zaal 3 is a laboratory for new makers and talent development, offering a safe space for both artists and the audience to freely explore and come to new insights.

The focus is on theatre and performance, with crossovers to visual arts, music, poetry and philosophy. Recurring highlights are projects from the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities. November 2023 will mark the 10 year anniversary of Zaal 3!

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