Archive

Research shows that birds in the city sing louder than in nature. That finding could just as easily have been a note in one of Olivier Messiaen’s notebooks. For hours, he would lie stretched out in the grass, listening to their chirping. During long walks in the forest, he meticulously notated their melodies. Messiaen also wanted to capture the surrounding environment in sound—for instance, how the canopy carries sound depending on how dense or open it is. The spectral composer Tristan Murail once said: “Messiaen likes to ‘color in’ the passing of time.” In Oiseaux Exotiques, you can take that quite literally. According to Messiaen himself, he translates the bright colors of exotic birds from around the world into swirling rainbows of music.

In Talisker, premiered in Antwerp Central Station for Antwerp 93, it is the resonant architecture of the railway cathedral that inspired the composer. Ideally, Luc Brewaeys would have loved to hurl a metal trash can from the roof’s rafters to the ground—just to marvel at the prolonged echoes. Instead, five soloists, a percussion ensemble, and an extensive clarinet choir engage in a fascinating play with the acoustics of the concert space (including crashing cymbals). The resulting sound world is so rich that, as a listener, you’re sometimes unsure of what you’re actually hearing. The clarinets pick up the sound of the metal percussion instruments, and vice versa, stretching the echo further and making it more expansive. Brewaeys also invented new sound phenomena. As a spectralist, he colors his tones with so-called multiphonics, allowing the overtones of a sound to shimmer audibly. Unusual instruments like a whirly tube are no exception, nor are extended playing techniques. Brewaeys’ musical imagination seems inexhaustible. Perhaps the divine drink referenced in the title had something to do with it?

Chirping birds against a colorful sky, an exceptional glass of whisky—one thing and another leads us to Scotland. Composer Genevieve Murphy was born there. Not on the wild Isle of Skye (home of the smoky whisky Talisker), but on the east coast, in Dundee. Her brand-new work The Angel’s Share travels from the lowlands to the highlands, paying tribute along the way to the unspoiled natural beauty of her grandmother’s homeland. A 300-mile hike in five minutes for brass and percussion.

The existence of queer love remains a blind spot, discovered Annika Socolofsky (winner of the Gaudeamus Award 2021) when a group of professional detectives, during a night out, kept trying to flirt with her girlfriend—ironically without realizing that she was clearly not straight. It became the starting point for her new piece, DETECTIVE CONVENTION, which will have its world premiere at Gaudeamus 2024.

Also on the program: K-ourante by Jinwook Jung, a work that builds a bridge between gender representation in K-pop culture and 17th- and 18th-century France.

Annika Socolofsky (1990) is an American composer and avant-folk vocalist. Her music grows from the power and nuances of the human voice and ranges from orchestral works and operas to a cappella folk ballads. Annika frequently writes for her own voice with chamber ensemble, including a growing repertoire of “feminist rage lullabies” titled Don’t Say A Word, aimed at challenging centuries of harmful lessons taught to young children by reworking old lullabies for a new, queer era.

Michael Gordon, the musical pioneer and co-founder of the New York ensemble Bang on a Can, is known for his subtle rhythmic explorations and bold compositional inventions. His music stems from his experience in the underground rock scene of the Big Apple, combined with classical training. It’s no surprise, then, that he is obsessed with the nature of rhythm and has built his career on exploring what happens when different rhythms are layered on top of one another.

Gordon composed Timber in 2009 specifically for HIIIT, as music for the dance production Pinball & Grace by Club Guy & Roni. The concert version quickly became a modern classic in the percussion repertoire. Gordon left behind traditional instrumentation, resulting in a mesmerizing masterpiece—a meditation on sound and rhythm that pushes the physical power, endurance, and technique of percussionists to a new level; a true desert trip.

Timber consists of five continuous sections, in which the energy of swelling and fading rolls creates an almost hallucinatory effect. Through their intense interplay, the musicians seem to transform into a single body. The piece is performed on so-called simantras, instruments made of archaic hardwood, rooted in a historical Greek ecclesiastical tradition and first developed by composer Iannis Xenakis.

At the brand-new festival Het Groene Geheim in Almere, HIIIT will perform the piece outdoors in the afternoon, in celebration of the start of summer. Children under 18 get free entry to the festival, which will take place on Landgoed de Kemphaan.

Composer Joël Bons completes a new work for his expanded Atlas Ensemble, now transformed into an orchestra. Following his highly acclaimed Nomaden, this piece once again marks a grand addition to his oeuvre.

The Atlas Orchestra is a new collective consisting of more than forty musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds. It originates from the Atlas Ensemble, which Joël Bons founded in 2002. Related string, wind, and percussion instruments from East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe come together to create an exciting sonic palette. After centuries of evolution, the Atlas Orchestra reunites these ‘descendants’ and their musical diversity. This gives rise to ‘new music,’ a source of inspiration for both musicians and listeners.

For Nomaden, a predecessor of this work, Joël Bons was awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2019—the ‘Nobel Prize for Music.’ With this new composition, which symbolizes the connection of cultures, Bons continues this journey. A unique orchestra rarely heard live!

During the First and Second World Wars, church bells were widely melted down into deadly weapons. Now that Europe is gradually being drawn into a new war on its own soil, HIIIT is reversing this process with Battles & Silences. In this project, battlefield weapon waste will serve as the foundation for a new series of instruments and compositions in the coming years.

In the spring of 2024, eight kilograms of Ukrainian bullet casings were melted down into bars in Kyiv, shipped, and then reforged in the Netherlands into a new resonant bell—marking the beginning of this reversal: turning destruction back into beauty. With Battles & Silences, HIIIT creates an alternative, immersive, and imaginary landscape that allows space to listen to this transformation and reflect on our urgent longing for peace.

Composer duo Poulson Sq. (Anthony Fiumara & Mathijs Leeuwis) confront the audience—together with two performers from HIIIT—with the pressing and ever-relevant reminder that peace is never a given. Through analog tape echoes and percussive interventions, the sounds of the 45-kilogram bell will compose a landscape of battles and silences.