Thursday 27 Jul 2023 — This week the Gaudeamus Festival has announced its complete programming. An earlier press release already revealed the new programmes by Mabe Fratti, Klein, Aurélie Lierman, Jelmer de Moed and Asko|Schönberg, among others. Today we would like to draw your attention to, among others, A Beautiful Path by Kate Moore, Ways to listen to a river by Dutch-Argentine artist Nahuel Cano and What are you building in there!? by improvisation collective BUI. The Gaudeamus Festival will take place from 6 to 10 September 2023 in Utrecht. The festival includes more than 50 concerts, multidisciplinary performances, the Gaudeamus Award, workshops, lectures and a seminar.
For her new project A Beautiful Path, Kate Moore sets off into the wider world. From the Dutch town of Oss she walks (in stages), following the sun, via her native Oxford to the Irish island of Skellig Michael, Europe’s westernmost point. She takes instruments with her and composes en plein air. Like a contemporary troubadour, she lets her new music emerge, as she walks. “Although it is a physical journey, it is first and foremost a journey of the soul. I fell under the spell of the idea of seeing walking paths as history books and reading them with my senses while walking.” During the Gaudeamus Festival, she will open A Beauitful Path with a performative presentation and there will be an exhibition of the project at Movement Exposed Gallery Space in Utrecht.
Lamin Fofana
Highly prolific producer, DJ and sound artist Lamin Fofana (pictured above) uses ambient, techno and field recordings as a means of investigating issues of movement, migration, alienation and belonging. In his work he explores what lies beyond our everyday reality, in multi-sensory live performances and sound installations. Having released five albums in 2022, three of which formed a trilogy (Ballad Air & Fire, Shafts of Sunlight and The Open Boat), what he will bring to Gaudeamus Festival 2023 remains a surprise, but whatever it turns out to be will be intense, devastating and intertextual.
Ways to listen to a river
What do you hear when you listen to a river? What history and stories lie hidden within it? Argentinian artist Nahuel Cano, who lives in the Netherlands, together with filmmaker Juan Fernández Gebauer and Ensemble Modelo62, follows the poetic trail that rivers have created in Argentina and in the Netherlands. This multimedia performance invites you to listen to the voice of these rivers. Cano explored the Vecht (Utrecht) and the Limay and Salado rivers (Argentina). He translated the various themes of these rivers, such as human intervention in nature, capitalism, ecology and colonialism, into the multimedia performance Ways to listen to a river, which will be premiered during the festival.
BUI
In the performance What are you building in there!? BUI builds a living sound construction in the chapel of Doornburgh country estate in Maarssen. The improvisation collective incorporates the space as a partner in the ensemble and, together with the audience, moves towards a new perspective on the location. Space, sound and time merge seamlessly.This is also a premiere.
In the spirit of the Canto
In recent decades Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato has become an absolute ‘love it or hate it’ classic. In January 2023, the month in which the composer would have reached his 100th birthday, a Simeon ten Holt Day was organized in TivoliVredenburg, where composers could pitch a piece in the spirit of the Canto. Composer and performer Daan Geysen won the pitch and as a result his work Keep Going! – for strings, vocals, synthesizers and dancers, using motion sensors to drive electronic sounds – will be heard on the opening night of Gaudeamus Festival 2023.
How juggling sounds
Sounds Like Juggling has invented a whole new genre: making music by juggling. In PUINBAL, composer Arthur Wagenaar and juggler Guido van Hout join forces in a circus of movement and sound, where the rules of the game are constantly changing and nothing is impossible. Beats with home-made shaker balls and banging jerrycans, body percussion while the ball is in the air, and waltzing with ticking metal pipes. This is how juggling sounds! Armed with their grooves, the four performers tackle life.
For many more performances and concerts, visit the website.
Gaudeamus scouts talent from home and abroad and contributes as commissioner, producer and platform to the development of the careers of innovative composers, (sound) artists, performers and musicians, who are challenged to create new, innovative works. This is often accompanied by years of support and guidance.
