In the past academic year I spent quite some time creating and teaching a new course ‘Values in Music’ as part of the new minor Music Studies at Leiden University. It was my first teaching experience with (mainly) non-music students and I must say that this has been a very enriching experience. Not only were the students open to discussing my classical and experimental music examples, in their personal assignments they also introduced me to some fascinating hip-hop, black metal, R&B, dance, funk, world music, etc. Interesting also to observe the great interest of young adults in music from the seventies and eighties (from ABBA to Eno). Very happy with the positive evaluations and comments and looking forward to the next edition of the course, starting in 2021. An outline of all lectures in the course can be found here.
I wrote a text for FORUM+ on artistic research policy at Dutch conservatoires. My central claim is that the role of research in conservatoire curriculum is changing. In the post-Bologna years, the integration of research in master curriculum was considered part of a process of academisation. Today, we can observe the appropriation of research in service of educational ambitions to integrate conservatoire curriculum in a more market-oriented and time-efficient way. In my text, I formulate some opportunities and pitfalls of this process.
A printable pdf-version with a more readable layout can be found here.
Enkele jaren geleden zag ik het indrukwekkende Mars II van Karl Van Welden en Frederik Croene tijdens het eerste Oortreders festival. Onlangs maakten beiden een nieuwe voorstelling, of althans een voorstudie daartoe. Een korte reflectie daarop, en een aansporing om het eindspel nog even uit te stellen.
It was a joy to perform Tubes again with Cathy van Eck, next to Cathy’s ‘Wings’ and a few other works at the Warsaw Autumn Festival. Also a great performance of Agostino di Scipio. More photo’s here.
End 2009 Frederik Croene premiered my Das Wohlpreparierte Klavier I at Transit Festival. It was quite a success, but also marked the end of a period of radical experiment and intensive composing, before getting a phd and moving into other fields. Next performance of Elisa Medinilla and Frederik Croene in DeBijloke may sound like a wake-up call. Indeed, after a compositional break of almost 10 years, book II and III are in the making, hopefully to be premiered towards the end of 2019!
These two young men put their stamp on the twentieth-century history of music and dance with a bang sacré. What is the state of dance-music collaborations today? November Music organised an expert meeting on this subject, I was asked to moderate and make some introductory notes.
