Holland Festival 2017: democracy, Indonesia, women composers

The coming edition of the Holland Festival, running from 3 to 25 June, features 33 Dutch premières and 17 world premières. The festival celebrates its 70th birthday with an unwavering commitment to the arts.

During the presentation in the Amsterdam Bimhuis on Tuesday 7 February Annet Lekkerkerker, director of the festival, quoted Henk Reinink, one of its founders: ‘We initiate this festival in order to realize something great with joint forces.’

From spectators to ‘introspectors’

This was in 1947. Lekkerkerker stressed that seven decades later this mission statement is still in full force. ‘Shortly after World War II people acknowledged the importance of the arts.’ Unfortunately this is no longer a given in these troubled times, where all former certainties seem to be under attack from populist forces. Lekkerkerker, however, insists: ‘Art forms an essential and indispensable part of our lives. It broadens our perspective and turns spectators into “introspectors”.’

Democracy

The festival has two main themes. The first one is highly topical: democracy in all its different aspects, with eye-catching events such as The Nation, a theatrical thriller about tensions in the ‘multi-culti’ Netherlands by Eric de Vroedt; My Country, a production of the British National Theatre on the Brexit; Octavia. Trepanation, a new opera of Dmitri Kourliandski investigating the mechanisms of the Russian Revolution in 2017, and La Democrazia in America in which Romeo Castelucci probes the function of theatre.

Contemporary music from Indonesia

The second theme is Indonesia, the former Dutch colony that was only granted its independence in 1949, after fierce struggles and under international pressure. Even today Indonesia is a sore point in Holland, where relatives of the train hijackers that were brutally killed in 1977 are still fighting for justice.

To this day Indonesia is often mainly viewed from a colonial perspective, but the festival chooses to zoom in on contemporary art from the sprawling archipelago. ‘A Night in Indonesia’ presents a five hour long mini-festival in the famous pop venue Paradiso on 16 June.

It features underground bands combining elements from traditional Indonesian music with pop, rock, folk, noise and/or electronics.’ The duo Boi Akih of jazz singer Monica Akihary and guitarist Niels Brouwer will première Controlling the Swing, commissioned by the Holland Festival.

The next day Ensemble Modern presents Ruang Suara in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, showcasing music from young Indonesian composers that was crafted in close cooperation with the Germans.

In the infectiously Dah-Dha-Dah by Gema Swaratyagita, the musicians only seem to fill the stage in passing, producing weird & crazy sounds along with purely musical ones. Swaratyagita herself has a vocal part and plays the suling, an Indonesian recorder.

Religions without borders

The Dutch-Indonesian composer Sinta Wullur will realize Temple of Time. She specially designed it for the Holland Festival Proms in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw on 24 June. Audience and musicians are encircled by 84 gongs from Wullur’s chromatic gamelan.

The gong players and eight vocalists from different religious traditions will perform both traditional and newly composed music. The texts are based on ancient sacred texts from the four world religions about the passage of time.

At the presentation Wullur mentioned that while at school in Indonesia, her religious classes were evenly dedicated to Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Islam. Librettist Miranda Lakerveld pointed out that this seems less obvious today, considering how difficult it was to find appropriate religious texts that both respect tradition and avoid sensitivities.

Sacred grounds

The Proms also feature the world première of Sacred Environment, a collaboration between the Australian-Dutch composer Kate Moore and visual artist Ruben van Leer. In this oratorio the singer Alex Oomens makes a trip to Hunter Valley in virtual reality, the audience following her to the temple on the sacred grounds of the Australian Wonnarua and Darkinjung tribes.

Theo van Gogh meets Gilbert & George

I look especially forward to Huba de Graaff’s music theatre piece The Naked Shit Songs. It is based on an interview of Theo van Gogh with the British artists Gilbert and George in 1996. The discussion addresses such diverse themes as art, sex and religion, Muslims, fundamentalism and death.

Huba de Graaff set the (almost) complete interview to music. This is the more poignant since Van Gogh – who was very outspoken and straightforward on controversial issues – was murdered by an Islamic fundamentalist in 2004.

As is its wont the Holland Festival chooses to walk untrodden paths. Not only does it address topical themes, but it also prominently features  women composers, still too often overlooked in regular concert programmes. It can only be hoped they won’t again be forgotten when artistic director Ruth Mackenzie leaves for Paris in 2019.

#HF17 #AnnetLekkerkerker #GemaSwaratyagita #GilbertGeorge #HollandFestival #KateMoore #MonicaAkihary #RomeoCastelucci #RuthMackenzie #SintaWullur #TempleOfTime #TheoVanGogh

Huba de Graaff: ‘Art must be provocative’ #HF17

The artist’s duo Gilbert & George had travelled to Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg to witness a spitting image impersonation by Christopher (countertenor) & Nigel Robson (tenor) in The Naked Shit Songs by Dutch composer Huba de Graaff. She based her opera on a literal transcript of a television interview of Theo van Gogh with Gilbert & George in 1996. It was premièred in the Holland Festival to great acclaim on Thursday 22 June, and can be heard there once more on Friday 23 June.

I interviewed De Graaff for the programme book, and for a pre concert talk (it was streamed live, see below).

In 1969 Huba de Graaff saw Gilbert & George posed as living sculptures on the stairs of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, in 1996 she perused their Naked Shit Pictures in the same venue. Now she presents her opera The Naked Shit Songs, based on an interview of Theo van Gogh with the artists about this controversial exhibition. De Graaff: ‘Art must be provocative.’

Huba de Graaff (Amsterdam, 1959) operates somewhat in the margin of Dutch musical life, creating music theatre on a wide variety of subjects most people would not readily associate with opera. Electronics and visuals are a given, often examining the relation between man and machine. In her opera Lautsprecher Arnolt (2003) the main roles are performed by loudspeakers; in The Death of Poppaea (2006) cameras abound; in Liebesleid (2017) a woman trains off her lovesickness, panting and puffing away during a fierce workout in a fitness centre.

Apera

A recurrent theme is the relation between speech and song. De Graaff: ‘To me it’s clear that singing came first, and that our spoken language developed from this over a long period of time. This is not only evidenced by the tone languages that have survived to this day, but also by the fact that both children and demented elderly people sing. Singing makes it easier for us to remember and cherish important events.’

To prove her point De Graaff studied the way monkeys communicate, basing her Apera (2013) on her findings: ‘Surprisingly their shrieks and shouts at times come very close to renaissance polyphony.’ She went a step further in Pornopera (2015), crafting the libretto from the lustful moaning and groaning of a copulating couple. Or, in her own words: ‘everything that happens with your voice BEFORE you start singing’. In The Naked Shit Songs she approaches the theme from the opposite angle: ‘I call it a “retropera”, because now I’m turning spoken language into song.’

Television interview on Naked Shit Pictures

The idea for the opera was suggested by the actor/singer Jan Elbertse, with whom she had worked before. ‘In 1996 he had videotaped a television interview from Theo van Gogh with Gilbert & George on their exhibition The Naked Shit Pictures. I am a great admirer of theirs, and was fascinated by how light-heartedly they discuss precarious themes such as love, tolerance, homosexuality and Islam. I decided to set the entire interview to music, including all the repetitions, hesitations and slips of the tongue. It took me a month to type everything out.’

Van Gogh was controversial because he was a thoroughbred provocateur, openly ranting against Islamic people, sometimes even calling them backward goatfuckers. De Graaff: ‘I absolutely abhor such aggressive statements. Fortunately he refrained from them in his talk with Gilbert & George, for he was a great interviewer. He asked the right questions, putting his guests at ease while avidly smoking cigarette after cigarette.

You see Gilbert & George gradually relax, even becoming a bit tipsy in the end. I was struck by how much our world has changed since 1996. Nowadays it’s unthinkable anyone would smoke or drink alcohol on television, let alone innocently address politically incorrect subjects. Since 9/11 and the assassination of Theo in 2004 the Western world has completely lost its innocence.’

Art must ask questions

While working on the typescript her already high esteem for Gilbert & George intensified: ‘I love their motto “Art is for all”, and how they keep stressing their work should be understandable to taxi-drivers and children. With this in mind I composed very singable melodies.

I’m also impressed by their immense love and tolerance toward mankind. Especially striking is their reiterated praise for Islam, referring to it as a religion of love. They call themselves Christian artists, though admitting to being “very unchristian” and fearing Christian fundamentalists. Thus they continuously raise uneasy issues, which to me is the essence of art: it must ask questions and be provocative.’

Gentlemen showing their arses

Gilbert & George are usually immaculately dressed, but in their Naked Shit Pictures the purebred British gentlemen relentlessly expose their bare buttocks and create images from their own excrements. De Graaff: ‘This inspired me to design a “turd-theme’, a bass run that keeps popping up in different guises, while my musical structure mirrors how they model their turds into strict but florid and beautiful frameworks.’

The Naked Shit Songs has six movements, each comprising exactly a thousand words, preceded by a prologue of fifty and concluded with an epilogue of seventy-five words. This layout may seem haphazard and rational, but was consciously chosen. De Graaff: ‘Thus I avoided for my opera to become kitschy, for it could easily have turned into a mere succession of jaunty songs. Shaping my material into a tough structure made it possible to introduce a new version of the theme with each subdivision.’

Choir doubles Gilbert & George

The first part is spoken, only after a thousand words Gilbert & George burst into song. De Graaff: ‘They start on a scream that follows their explanation of how they make their images: …we go into a black bag. And inside this bag we shout: Aaaaaah! Halfway through also Theo starts singing. They are accompanied by a musical ensemble of double bass, piano, synthesizer, electric guitar and percussion, and a choir that doubles their lines or interjects its own comments. For this I engaged the GALA-Choir, consisting of gay and lesbian singers.’

Because of the frequent references to Islam, the composer was convinced she also needed a choir with a Muslim background. This proved less simple to realise than she’d thought: ‘I have many Kurdish friends who drink alcohol and come to see my opera’s. They were not daunted by Apera or Pornopera and responded enthusiastically when I told them about my Naked Shit Songs.

‘Muslim choir’

Some of them were even willing to sing in the ‘Muslim choir’, yet after reading the libretto they demurred. They condemn Theo’s murder as a matter of course, but it’s one thing to be open-minded and another to ignore how deeply he had offended the Quran. I had underestimated the pressure they feared to encounter from the Islamic community. At the time of the interview there was still a dialogue, now everyone is continuously walking on eggshells.’

Precisely for this reason she became even more determined: ‘In these troubled times dialogue is absolutely indispensable, on all possible levels. So I vented my disappointment to my local Turkish grocer: Why can’t I find a Muslim choir? This proved to be a stroke of luck. He suggested contacting Selim Dogru, a Turkish-Dutch composer who leads the reART World Music Choir. Selim at once agreed to take part in my opera, as did his singers, who all read the manuscript closely. They know exactly what it’s about and consider it an important project.’

The ‘Muslim choir’ enters towards the end of the opera, where the murder of Van Gogh is subtly suggested. De Graaff: ‘An electric guitar solo sets in. Gilbert sings: It’s finished, it’s dead. Theo gets up and leaves the table. Pandemonium breaks loose. Wham! Wham! Wham! The choir belts out: money, race, sex, religion, while Gilbert & George once more stress how kind Muslims are.

In the end we shortly hear Theo’s real voice: So that’s why you love to be surrounded by Muslim people? Then things quieten down, and everyone sings along with the ‘Muslim choir’: Imagine the lives of all the people at this moment in the world, wherever they are. These were George’s last words in the interview. It’s such a powerful and soothing text, but each time I hear it I get goose bumps, for we all know what happened hereafter.*

*Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered by an islam fundamentalist on 2 November 2004

My pre concert talk with Huba de Graaff was streamed live on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L_k7KjQsG8

Almond Blossom – Vincent’s Present

Vincent

Mr and Mrs Theo van Gogh-Bonger are honoured to inform you of the birth of their son Vincent Willem.

Paris, 31 January 1890

8, cité Pigalle.

Theo van Gogh and Jo van Gogh-Bonger
To: Vincent van Gogh
Date: Paris, Friday, 31 January 1890

Vincent van Gogh’s painting “Almond Blossom” has a deeply personal backstory tied to family and the joy of new life. Completed in February 1890, the painting was created during a significant moment in Gogh’s life when he was living in an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, seeking treatment for his mental health struggles.

The painting symbolizes resilience and hope. Almond blossoms are among the first signs of spring, emerging with vitality after the harshness of winter. Van Gogh was inspired to paint this piece after receiving a letter from his brother Theo, who announced the birth of his son. In his letter, Theo shared that they planned to name the boy after Vincent, expressing a heartfelt wish that the child would inherit his uncle’s determination and courage.

“Almond Blossom” represents the deep bond between the brothers and the joy of new beginnings. This painting was one of the last flower works created by Van Gogh during his lifetime before his untimely death at the age of 37. It embodies themes of familial love, rebirth, and the enduring nature of beauty amid struggles.

My dear Theo,
Today I’ve just received your good news that you’re a father at last, that the most critical moment has passed for Jo, finally that the little one is well. It does me, too, more good and gives me more pleasure than I could express in words. Bravo – and how pleased Mother is going to be

FEbruary 1, 1890, Letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother, Theo van Gogh

Almond Blossom remained closest to the hearts of the Van Gogh family. Vincent Willem went on to found the Van Gogh Museum, ensuring that his uncle’s legacy and artistic contributions would be celebrated and preserved for future generations. The museum serves not only as a tribute to Vincent van Gogh’s remarkable body of work but also as a beacon of inspiration for art lovers and scholars from around the world.

#AlmondBlossom #TheoVanGogh #VanGoghMuseum #VincentVanGogh

In onderstaande artikel wordt ook Katja Schuurspons aangehaald. Het enige wat ze doet is likken naar boven en trappen naar beneden waar Hirschi Ali het moet ontgelden. Bij mij ligt het schuursponsje nu in de bleek. #TheovanGogh

Zus op herdenking Van Gogh: 'We missen Theo enorm, ook in publiek debat' - https://nos.nl/l/2542991

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼 𝘃𝗮𝗻 𝗚𝗼𝗴𝗵 20 𝗷𝗮𝗮𝗿 𝗻𝗮 𝗺𝗼𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗱𝗮𝗰𝗵𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗺𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗱𝗮𝗺

Twintig jaar na de moord op filmmaker Theo van Gogh zijn er zaterdag herdenkingen in Amsterdam. Op 2 november 2004 werd de regisseur en opiniemaker op klaarlichte dag vermoord door Mohammed B. in de Linnaeusstraat in Amsterdam-Oost. Onder meer op de plek van de moord, in het Oosterpark en in De Balie zijn er...

https://www.rtl.nl/boulevard/artikel/5478430/theo-van-gogh-20-jaar-na-moord-herdacht-amsterdam

#TheoVanGogh #moord #herdacht

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼 𝘃𝗮𝗻 𝗚𝗼𝗴𝗵 𝗼𝗽 2 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗱𝗮𝗰𝗵𝘁 𝗼𝗽 𝗟𝗲𝗶𝗱𝘀𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗶𝗻

Filmmaker Theo van Gogh wordt op zaterdag 2 november herdacht op het Leidseplein in Amsterdam. Het is op die dag precies twintig jaar geleden dat de regisseur en opiniemaker werd vermoord door Mohammed B.

https://www.rtl.nl/boulevard/artikel/5476467/theo-van-gogh-op-2-november-herdacht-op-leidseplein

#TheoVanGogh #Herdacht #Leidseplein

#KaikenTakanaOnNainen!

#VincentVanGogh nousi tunnettuuteen vasta kuolemansa jälkeen. Ja vasta veljensä #TheoVanGogh in kuoleman jälkeen. Vaikka Theo yritti koko uransa nostaa #Vincent in kuuluisuuteen.

Lopulta sen teki Theon leski #JohannaVanGoghBonger.

Tämä hautautui kuitenkin historiaan, kuten monien naisten ansiot.

Vuonna 2009 #vanGogh museo sai Johannan kirjoitukset, ja hänen merkityksensä nousi esiin.

#katselusuositus #dokkari #dokumentti #taide #kuvataide

https://arenan.yle.fi/1-66611860

Van Gogh, only twenty-nine at the time, writes to Theo…

#letter #artist #arthistory #vincentvangogh #theovangogh #art #quotes