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To celebrate its 45th anniversary, Rotterdam-based media platform V2 is presenting a live programme featuring HIIIT. We will perform work by Edwin van der Heide (Hilversum, 1970), a Dutch artist, composer and researcher working at the intersection of sound, space and interaction. He studied music technology in Utrecht and sonology at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. His work expands the traditional notions of composition and musical language into spatial, interactive and interdisciplinary realms, creating installations, performances and environments in which audiences find themselves immersed in the work and are invited to actively explore it.

Overspel is an improvised duet for percussion and live electronics. A percussionist plays cymbals while Van der Heide processes their sound in real time. Only the processed sound is amplified. The two musicians are treated as if they are jointly playing a single instrument. From this perspective, the work explores themes of cooperation, tension and shared control through a constantly evolving interplay of sounds. The work later became the basis for Van der Heide’s further experiments with remote performances using ISDN connections.

Outdoors stands a large, wondrous sphere. Inside it: ten tons of clay and five hundred liters of water. Welcome to Klei, the new performance by Schweigman& in collaboration with visual artist Zoro Feigl and HIIIT.

Body, landscape and live music
For Klei, Zoro Feigl created an earthy and unpredictable clay landscape. Within it, the performers of Schweigman& surrender to the rhythm, the vibration, the weight, and the transience of the clay. At times, clay and body merge, and the clay feels safe and familiar. At other moments, it becomes a struggle. Greater forces within the landscape seem to take over. Percussionists from HIIIT play the ceramic instruments of Gemma Luz Bosch, creating a sound world of clay and water.

Klei is a search for the ancient connection between humans and clay, in all its beauty, struggle, and wonder. The performance is an invitation to return to the essence. How do we relate to our bodies? And to the land we live on? Let yourself be immersed in this musical and sensory world of clay.

The Ragged Music Festival (the brainchild of the two young Russian pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy) reaches a deeply affecting apotheosis with a star-studded performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Messiaen composed this gripping plea for peace in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he was interned in June 1940. The music of Alfred Schnittke and of Morton Feldman, master of silence, is likewise connected to death and to the inexorable passage of time in human life. HIIIT performs Schnittke’s Lebenslauf in collaboration with Kolesnikov.

Messiaen’s famous quartet is a religiously inspired vision in which an angel brings time to a standstill. But it is also a monument to life, resonating with imitations of birdsong and warm harmonies. That same warmth, and the underlying melancholy for all that makes the world beautiful, is also present in the wondrously consoling Andante from Schubert’s most famous piano trio. With Piano Phase, Rosas and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker pay homage to the American minimalist Steve Reich.

Let loose at this Minimal Rave on King’s Night and dance to the music of Philip Glass and Louis Andriessen.
This standing concert in the Conservatoriumzaal of Amare in The Hague promises to be an unforgettable experience. First, immerse yourself in the finest minimal music by Philip Glass, then really let go to the danceable, high-energy Hoketus by our Dutch star composer Louis Andriessen.

In Hoketus, the core element is the hocket technique. Characteristic of this technique—already used in the Middle Ages—is that the notes of a melody are distributed among several players. The ensemble in Hoketus is divided into two identical groups (consisting of pan flute, tenor saxophone, Fender piano, piano, and congas), which complement each other and therefore never play simultaneously. Yet there is a twist: in harmonic and melodic terms, Hoketus offers a spicier, more pungent variant of American minimalism.

Music in Similar Motion is one of the first minimalist works by composer Philip Glass. He wrote it in 1969 for his own Philip Glass Ensemble. The title already hints at what happens: the musical lines all move in the same direction, but not always exactly in unison. The piece is built from short melodic building blocks – “cells” – that are repeated over and over. Only when one of the musicians gives a small cue does the ensemble move on to the next cell.

Because the harmony, tone color, dynamics, and tempo change very little, the listener’s attention is naturally drawn to what does shift: the rhythm. Glass was inspired in this by Indian music. In Western music, rhythm often arises from fixed patterns and recurring accents. Glass took a different approach: he built his music from small rhythmic units that he strung together into larger structures. “In Western music we divide time, as if slicing a loaf of bread. Indian music takes small units – ‘beats’ – and strings them together to form longer time values,” says Glass.

Especially for the Spotlight Festival, the The Hague-based ensembles Klang and HIIIT will once again perform this beautiful work together on the stepped landscape of Amare. The concert is free for everyone to attend!