Plural Bodies, Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Saturday June 1, 2013 at 7:30PM
CPR – Brooklyn, NY

Dutch dancer and choreographer Marlieke Burghouts is currently studying in New York at Dance New Amsterdam. She will start her Masters in Choreography at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, UK this fall. Before leaving New York, she presents Plural Bodies with guest choreographer Kate Ladenheim at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn.

Plural bodies is a collaborative performance that explores the complexity of gender, sexuality and identity. The western gender binary system, economy, free choice, cyber space, it leaves it traces and informs the way we understand and express gender. The evening follows gender expressions in the grey fields and how it is being influenced, where it comes from and how it develops. Through the physicality of dance and body language the dancers explore these grey fields and push their own limitations of gender.

Ruben Naeff, Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Saturday May 11, 2013 at 8:00PM
LaSalle Pianos – San Francisco, CA

Dutch Composer Ruben Naeff Wins New Music Competition. Wild Rumpus New Music Collective performs his Euphoria in San Francisco’s LaSalle Pianos.

The San Francisco-based new music group Wild Rumpus presents five world premieres, mostly from finalists of their 2011 Commissioning Project, a competition that received 215 submissions from around the globe, which was won by Australian composer Julian Day and Dutch composer Ruben Naeff.

The Netherlands will be represented by Naeff’s Euphoria, for an octet consisting of flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello as well as electric guitar, percussion and harp. In a recent conversation with the ensemble, Naeff said his music might represent “that life is busy [with] a lot of information thrown at us. We have to do something with that – and become happy with it”. In the same interview, Naeff discussed the differences in new music between the Netherlands and the United States, observing that art music seems to be less sacred in the US than back home. The full interview can be read on wildrumpusmusic.org/ruben-naeff-interview.

About the Composer
Amsterdam-born and Brooklyn-based composer Ruben Naeff collaborated with numerous renowned musicians in Europe and America, co-founded the West 4th New Music Collective, and was recently featured on the Bang on a Can Marathon and the Aspen Music Festival. After a Dutch career in math, music and economics, he was awarded the prestigious Huygens Talent Scholarship to study with Michael Gordon in New York City. In the Netherlands, he gained recognition with his Bètacanon for de Volkskrant, which was released on CD, his creed for the free markets for politician Ivo Opstelten, and his tribute to the deviant voice inspired by the Faustian pact of Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte. Currently, most of his current activities take place across the United States.

Jacob TV, Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Thursday May 9, 2013 at 8:00PM
TriBeCa New Music – New York, NY

Friday May 10, 2013 at 8:00PM
TriBeCa New Music – New York, NY

Popular Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis, a.k.a. Jacob TV presents new works at the TriBeCa New Music 2013 Festival.

Written for flutist Margaret Lancaster, Jacob TV leads off the 2013 Festival with the world premiere of IT, bringing speech music and video together to tell the amazing story of how Hellen Keller learned to speak with the help of her coach Ann Sullivan.

In the first full series as Artists in Residence at The Cell theater, the 2013 Festival presents Art of the Salon, a re-imagining of the salon tradition for the 21st century; premiering exciting new works that feature high-caliber performing artists in a premium setting that will be streamed live on the internet to a global audience.

Tribeca New Music presents “a wide variety of composers, united by creative engagement with popular culture.” —New York Times

Frans Bloem, Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Sunday May 5, 2013 at 2:00PM
Hofstra University – Hempstead, NY

This year marks the 30th Anniversary of the Dutch Festival at Hofstra University, celebrating Hofstra’s Dutch heritage.
Dutch cabaret vocalist Frans Bloem will be the MC of the day and also performs his own repertoire.

Winner of New York Bistro Award for outstanding cabaret vocalist, Frans Bloem was born in Holland and has traveled to more than 50 countries, entertaining audiences with great success. Cabaret Scenes says of Bloem, “With a passion that binds the audience to him, with spare movement and expressions, and with minimum narrative, Frans lets the songs communicate for themselves.”

The Festival starts at 11AM on the South Campus of the University. This year there will be a spotlight on the diverse cultures that have contributed to the global campus community of Hofstra with performers from Portugal and India.

Jobina Tinnemans, Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Friday April 19, 2013 at 7:30PM
Roulette – Brooklyn, NY

Dutch-Welsh composer Jobina Tinnemans is one of the 2013 commissionees for the MATA Festival. Her new work will be presented at Roulette in Brooklyn. On the same night Netherlands based American composer Henry Vega will also perform as part of the “Mechanical Turks: Composers/Performers” evening.

The MATA Festival celebrates its fifteenth year, April 17, 18-20; 2013, showcasing the wild freedom of today’s compositional climate with a sweeping range of original compositions by fifteen up-and-coming composers from nine countries around the globe. MATA has an outstanding track record for spotting new talent: the first three installments alone (1997-99) brought composers such as Jennifer Higdon, Randall Wolff, Lukas Ligeti, and Derek Bermel to greater notice, while later festivals have spotlighted Julia Wolfe, Annie Gosfield, and Nico Muhly, among many others. Festival Directors Todd Tarantino and Yotam Haber received international submissions from a record-breaking number of composers in 2013, confirming MATA’s status as the premier international presenter of emerging talent.

The second evening of the festival features works that stand at the intersection of new music, performance art, and sound art. Known for her work with concrete sounds, Dutch-Welsh composer Jobina Tinnemans follows the lead of the late Cornelius Cardew, incorporating nonmusicians into a new music context. Her MATA commission, Killing Time, is a concerto grosso for solo knitters, instrumental ensemble, and a ripieno orchestra of knitters, visualizing the passage of time through its trace in fibre.

Jobina Tinnemans is a music composer and sound designer, an indie radiophonic production company and contemporary artist; her work is rich, contrasting and encompasses a wide variety of analogue, digital, lofi and high-end techniques throughout her practice.

MATA is a not-for-profit organization that commissions, presents, and supports the music of a wide array of young composers from around the globe. MATA’s directors are motivated by a desire to create community among composers in the early stages of their careers, especially those whose work does not fit into existing institutions. In providing developing composers with professional performances of their work and valuable connections to colleagues, MATA is a catalyst for their entry into American musical life.
Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996, MATA presents a week-long festival of music by composers under age forty each spring in New York City. Each festival presents up to thirty works by young composers, at least three to four of which are newly commissioned. To date, MATA has commissioned seventy works, and has presented over three hundred performances of pieces by young composers. Commissioned works have been scored for a broad range of ensembles: from orchestra to solo voice, live electronics to gamelan ensemble. Performers on past MATA festivals have included: the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gamelan Son of Lion, The Knights Chamber Orchestra, So Percussion, L’Arsenale (Italy), Signal, JACK Quartet, Quartet New Generation, Calder Quartet, Argento Ensemble, Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, Either/Or, NOW Ensemble, Newspeak, VOX Vocal Ensemble, the Brookl yn Youth Chorus, and many more.

Lot Vekemans, Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Sunday April 21, 2013 at 2:00PM
Lark Play Development Center – New York, NY

The internationally celebrated Dutch play GIF (POISON) by playwright Lot Vekemans will receive its US premiere at the HotINK Festival of the Lark Play Development Center.

Six years after their divorce, a man and a woman meet each other again for the first time, at the place where their only child is buried. A letter, announcing that their child is going to be reburied because poison has been found in the soil, brings them back together. But whereas she is looking for someone with whom she can re-live the past, he wants someone who can look to the future. Both are torn apart by grief, but it is not until they let themselves become vulnerable enough to return to the past, to their child’s deathbed, that they seem to reconnect.

POISON has had numerous international successes all over Europe, Russia and South America (including requests for the “Film rights” in three different countries). This will be the first time it’ll be presented in English as translated by Rina Vergano. In the Netherlands the production of POISON was directed by Johan Simons for NTGent. Lot has written works for Toneelgroep Amsterdam, NTGent and various other Dutch & Flemish companies.

The staged reading features OBIE award winner Birgit Huppuch and Brennan Brown and will be directed by Dutch director Erwin Maas.

Frances-Marie Uitti, Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Friday April 12, 2013 at 7:00PM
Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes – Washington, DC

Saturday April 13, 2013 at 7:00PM
St James’ Episcopal Church – Richmond, VA

Dutch-American composer and performer Frances-Marie Uitti pioneered a revolutionary dimension to the cello by transforming it for the first time into a polyphonic instrument capable of sustained chordal (two, three, and four-part) and intricate multivoiced writing. Using two bows in one hand, this invention permits contemporaneous cross accents, multiple timbres, contrasting 4-voiced dynamics, simultaneous legato/articulated playing, that her previous work with a curved bow couldn’t attain.

“The spectacularly gifted cellist Frances-Marie Uitti has made a career out of demolishing musical boundaries. She has developed new techniques (most famously, playing with two bows simultaneously), collaborated with a who’s who of contemporary composers, and pushed the cello into realms of unexpected beauty and expression. So the place to be Tuesday night for anyone interested in new music or the cello – or just innovative thinking in general – was St. Mary’s Church in Foggy Bottom, where Uitti showed why she might be the most interesting cellist on the planet.” – Stephen Brookes, Washington Post

György Kurtág, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, Louis Andriessen, Jonathan Harvey, and Richard Barrett are among those who have used this technique in their works dedicated to her.

Collaborating significantly over years with avant garde artists such as John Cage, she has also worked closely with Iannis Xenakis, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough and countless composers from the new generation.

She regularly plays in festivals as the Biennale Di Venezia, Strasbourg Festival, Gulbenkian Festival Ars Musica, Holland Festival and for radios and televisions in Europe, Japan, and the United States, and collaborates with various musicians, filmmakers, DJs and video artists.

She has written for the Cambridge Companion to the Cello, Contemporary Music Review, Musik Texte and Tempo magazine.

As a pedagogue, Frances-Marie Uitti has given lectures and master classes at practically all the major European conservatories (Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen, Royal Conservatorium Den Haag, Sweelinck Conservatory Amsterdam, Royal Conservatory Brussels, Santa Cecilia Roma, Hochschule fur Musik in Koln, Hochschule Basle etc) and many universities in the USA.

She has recorded for ECM records, Wergo, BVHaast, Mode, Hat-Hut and ICP.

Lena, Photo: Courtesy of the Artist

Tuesday April 16, 2013 at 8:30PM
Bohemian National Hall – New York, NY

Festival runs from Tuesday April 9 thru Sunday April 21, 2013
Disappearing Act European Film Festival – New York, NY

Presented by the EYE Film Institute Netherlands, Christophe van Rompaey’s Dutch-Flemish film LENA was part of the official selection for the Toronto International Film Festival and Les Arcs European Film Festival.

The titular Lena is a 17-year-old girl who lives with her single mother, a Polish immigrant. Her appearance and the poor home she hails from makes her feel like an outsider, but she has the inner strength and will to fight for her dream. She radiates a sense of serenity and happiness in spite of her innate shyness. When an attractive boy sets his eyes on her and invites her to move in with him and his father, Lena happily leaves her disapproving mother to start her life anew. Her decision quickly takes a wrong turn as things become less perfect as they originally seemed.

Disappearing Act V European Film Festival in New York, an official project of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), presented by the Czech Center New York. This year’s edition features film screenings in three prestigious venues, with opening night at the IFC Center on Wednesday, April 10 and a special screening on April 18; screenings at the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) from April 19-21; and screenings at the digital cinema at Bohemian National Hall from April 11-20. The festival will present 24 contemporary European films from Austria, the Wallonia-Brussels region of Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Now in its fifth year, Disappearing Act was launched as an annual event in 2009 and instantly became a popular event in New York for its unique, carefully curated celebration of the vitality of contemporary European cinema. The program presents films that have gained acclaim on the festival circuit and with critics, yet remain largely unknown to American audiences. Though some of the films have secured U.S. theatrical distribution and a DVD release, the unbending financial demands of the current distribution system prevent them from reaching wider audiences. Disappearing Act brings these titles back to the attention of the media and the public, giving them another chance to be seen. Films will be introduced by special guests and filmmakers, who will also be present for post-screening discussions.

The Disappearing Act program includes a panel discussion, to be held this year on April 9 at the Bohemian National Hall as a pre-festival event. This year’s panel turns its attention to access to European cinema through various forms of streaming, from private viewing (such as Netflix and VOD) to streaming in cinemas and other cultural venues. Previously, panel discussions have been led by Richard Pena of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, A. O. Scott of The New York Times, John Vanco of IFC Films, journalist Eugene Hernandez and others who have explored industry topics such as access to foreign-language films by American audiences. For the second year in a row, the festival also opens itself as an educational resource to university students in cinema studies programs, providing an opportunity for them to introduce films and to post online reviews of festival films on the Disappearing Act festival blog.

Hans Pieter Herman, Photo: Courtesy of the Artist

Saturday March 30, 2013 at 1:00PM
Society of the Cincinnati – Washington, DC

Friday April 5, 2013 at 8:00PM
Symphony Space – New York, NY

Internationally acclaimed Dutch baritone Hans Pieter Herman (“Highly Engaging”- New York Times, ” a vocal phenomenon”- Ha’aretz, Tel Aviv) presents an evening of serious and humorous songs by Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Poulenc, Laitman and others. The New York Opera Society brings Mr Herman to Washington, DC and New York City. He will be accompanied by pianist Jason Wirth. Hans Pieter Herman is known for his combination of vocal beauty, dramatic intensity and comedic skill.

Dutch baritone Hans Pieter Herman began his musical studies in Amsterdam where he received his masters degree. Supported by Dutch government funding, he continued his vocal and performing studies in America at Northwestern University from which he holds an honorary advanced graduate degree in voice and opera performance.

There, he was also awarded the Emily Boettcher and Yule Bogue Endowed Graduate Scholarship Award and he was selected to be a honorary member of the music society Pi Kappa Lambda, the Alfa quarter.

His opera roles include Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème, Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Dr. Miracle in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Il Conte Almaviva in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Alidor in Nicolo Isouard’s opera Cendrillon performed and recorded on CD in Moscow at the famous Stanislavski theater on special invitation by Maestro Richard Bonynge.

In addition to operatic appearances he performed the lead role of Guido Contini in the musical Nine and participated very successfully in two other Dutch national tours of two musical productions, A Little Night Music and She Loves Me, both produced by the Royal Ballet of Flanders. Accordingly he was offered to create his own main stage production with this company. It was called Let’s Do It and was directed by Lieven Debrauwer who also wrote and directed the internationally acclaimed Flemish movie Pauline & Paulette

As a soloist he also appeared with great success in oratorio and concert performances such as, Carl Orf’s Carmina Burana performed in Chicago and conducted by Vance George, chorus conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, performed as a concerto competition winner at Northwestern University and Das Klagende Lied also by Gustav Mahler conducted by Hartmut Haenchen and performed with the Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

He holds the first price of the Verna Ross-Orndorff Austro-American Music Award Competition for Singers held in Chicago.

In addition he recently won 2nd prize in the Concours de la Chanson Alliance Française and is currently writing a show based on the life and work of Charles Trenet. He also frequently works as a chorister at De Nederlandse Opera (Dutch National Opera) and teaches voice at his studio in Amsterdam.

He attended several master classes at the Britten-Pears School For Advanced Musical Studies in the UK where he was selected as an alumnus to appear in recital at the 51st Aldeburgh festival. He was also a young artist at the Ravinia Festival.

During the summer of 2010 he appeared in a production of Richard Strauss his opera Ariadne auf Naxos at the Tanglewood Music Festival conducted by Maestro Christoph von Dohnányi and directed by Ira Siff.

Die Welt, Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Tuesday March 26, 2013 at 6:15PM
Walter Reade Theater – New York, NY

Thursday March 28, 2013 at 8:30PM
MoMa – New York, NY

Alex Pitstra’s debut feature Die Welt has been selected for the prestigious New Directors/New Films festival in New York. The festival is one of the most important showcases for emerging filmmakers from all over the world. New Directors/New Films has previously introduced the work of Pedro Almodóvar, Spike Lee, Darren Aronofsky, Wim Wenders, Wong Kar Wai, Christopher Nolan en Michael Haneke and Dutch talents including Esther Rots, Sacha Polak and Sander Burger.

Die Welt is written by Alex Pitstra, Thijs Gloger and Abdallah Rezgui and produced by Alex Pitstra Media. The film had its world premiere at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival and was screened in the Bright Future section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Die Welt is a moral drama about a society caught in the vacuum between dictatorship and democracy. We follow in the footsteps of a young DVD salesman Abdallah, who is becoming increasingly frustrated by his inability to create a fulfilling existence for himself. He is faced with the choice to stay or leave his country. But is life really better on the other side of the Mediterranean? This feature debut shows contemporary Tunisia with renewed cinematic audacity.

The Argentine/French/Dutch co-production Leones by director Jazmín Lopez is also selected for New Directors/New Films. The Dutch co-producer is Lemming Film.

The 42nd edition of New Directors/New Films takes place March 20 to 31 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York.