Friday 13 Jun 2025 — From 10 to 14 September 2025, the Gaudeamus Festival will take place in Utrecht, celebrating its eightieth anniversary with more than 45 concerts, interdisciplinary performances, the Gaudeamus Award, workshops, lectures and a seminar. The programme once again explores what composed music and musical performance can be in 2025, showcasing adventurous young artists and composers from all over the world. The first artists were announced in May, and Thursday 19 June will see the next batch of artists, including Los Thuthanaka on their first tour in Europe, Ego Death (Aho Ssan & Resina), Eli Keszler, Anushka Chkheidze, Quatuor Bozzini with Yannis Kyriakides and Andy Moor, and Copenhagen-based ensemble K!ART.
Opening night
For the world premiere of Ways of [ ], Dutch audiovisual artist Zeno van den Broek created a brand new composition for two percussion ensembles – HIIIT and Percussions de Strasbourg – and four robotic percussion machines with LED matrices that are trained to interact with human percussionists. Before and after this, audiences can choose between concerts by Yaz Lancaster, Quatuor Bozzini and Eli Keszler, who was nominated for the Gaudeamus Award all the way back in 2012 long before his rise to fame.
Saturday Night
Gaudeamus has been exploring the grey area between composed music, experimental electronic music and adventurous pop music for years, especially during the eclectic yearly Saturday Night programme. This year we present the first performance in The Netherlands of Los Thuthanaka, the new project of Chuquimamani-Condori, also known as Elysia Crampton, and their brother Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, celebrating the past, present and future of the Pakajaqi people from a queer perspective. Ego Death, the new project of Paris-based producer Aho Ssan and Warszaw-based cellist and composer Resina, will present pieces from their debut album that will be released in July this year. The adventurous Cello Octet Amsterdam will play two different concerts with two adventurous pop musicians: Nyokabi Kariũki, following an earlier pairing on the invitation of Gaudeamus in 2022, and Nana Adjoa. Amsterdam’s Thomas Azier, who made a name for himself in recent years as a pop innovator in Berlin and France, revises his own compositions in his new performance Power To The People Who Don’t Want It with a stripped-down, minimalist approach.
Commissions and premieres
Most of the programme of Gaudeamus consists of brand new projects, often co-commissioned by Gaudeamus. Including the new performance Intricate Pipes by Anushka Chkheidze, co-commissioned by Gaudeamus and Monheim Triennale, in which she works with the pipe organ—not in a classical sense, but as a programmable instrument expanded by digital tools. Other co-commissions include projects by COW Shift Z, Kate Moore, Jawa Manla and the sound installation [dis]appear by opera director Kenza Koutchoukali, pop musician Tessa Douwstra (LUWTEN) & designer Marlou Breuls (House of Rubber).
Berio and Bozzini
To commemorate the centenary of the birth of Italian composer Luciano Berio, Asko|Schönberg and Silbersee present a new version of his classic piece Recital (for Cathy). New work by Dutch composer Karmit Fadael will also be performed, and mirrors Berio’s work with a personal and contemporary perspective. The adventurous Canadian string quartet Quatuor Bozzini will celebrate their own anniversary during Gaudeamus Festival 2025 with three performances spread across the festival, including one on the Saturday Night with Yannis Kyriakides and guitarist Andy Moor, and on the closing day of the festival with a new edition of their biennial Composer’s Kitchen.
Gaudeamus Award
Since 1957, Gaudeamus has been giving the prestigious Gaudeamus Award as an incentive prize for young composers, with many winners going on to have glorious careers: Louis Andriessen (winner in 1959), Pauline Oliveros (1962), Unsuk Chin (1985), Karen Tanaka (1987), Michel van der Aa (1999) and many, many more. Each year four or five nominees are chosen by an independent jury. Several of their pieces are being performed throughout the festival, including one written especially for the festival, and at the end one of them wins the Award. This year, four nominees were chosen from over 300 submissions from all over the world: Matthew Grouse (1996, GBR), Golnaz Shariatzadeh (1996, IRN), Robin Haigh (1993, IRL/GBR) and Yaz Lancaster (1996, USA). The jury this year consisted of Isabel Mundry, Moritz Eggert and Yannis Kyriakides. This year, the nominee’s pieces will be performed by K!ART, SMASH.Duo, medium., Quatuor Bozzini, Asko|Schönberg & Silbersee, Nadar Ensemble and IEMA Ensemble.
