How does the music of today sound? What keeps young composers busy? For an answer to that question you can go annually at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht. You have to accept that you do not get one answer, but a hundred different – and the only correct answer is that diversity.
Diversity also emphasized the jury of the Gaudeamus Award 2025, which was awarded during the final concert. The four nominees had actually earned the prestigious incentive prize, the jury said repeatedly, they were all different and all good – you would almost forget that the English composer Matthew Grouse really The only winner is.
There was no music from Grouse on Sunday evening, but to underline the diversity again, after the award ceremony entered the Javanese singer and composer Peni Candra Rini the stage for the closing performance. In Rara – Allegories of the Southern Sea she interpreted stories from East Javanese mythology in an innovative way, with the help of shade puppets and video and assisted by two musicians with traditional instruments and electronics. Rini has an impressive voice that can sound essential, but also stark and raw, and which she used with enormous control to tell her stories.
A totally different kind of control spoke from the newest work by Kate Moore, which she presented on Sunday afternoon in the Kloostergang of the Dom Pandhof. Garden of Thorlessless Roses is part of Moores Project ‘A Beautiful Path’, with music she composed in the open air during a long walk from the Eastern Netherlands to Western Ireland. It was no coincidence that her occupation contained three ‘troubadour instruments’ (recorder, harp and viella, a medieval fedel played by Moore itself). Although singer Arnout Lems brought the songs with verve, the socked monotony did not sort the intended meditative effect. Slot worker Mayyi Lee jumped out with a solo for drums and bowls.
Four different soundtracks with the same film
Ensemble Postland asked four composers to make a soundtrack for the same short film, which is the leading experimental filmmaker Barbara meter especially for Sound of View made. Her film ‘Beyond the roads’ was therefore shown four times in a row, with intriguing results. Meters associative concatenation of images (country roads, girl who throws a ball, demonstrators who pass on paving stones, a ship in the fog) always got a different load. You saw new things and the time experience changed. Juan Felipe Wallers hunted music was written tightly on the assembly, just like the pulsating work of Yu Oda, while Katarzyna szwed with slow, sprained lyrics called on intense sadness. The strongest was the dynamic and spherical music of Friso van Wijck, who created an exciting counterpoint with the images with spun lines. Sound of View Go on tour.
Ensemble Kluster5 played the new work in almost perfect darkness Expedition from former Gaudeamus Award winner Aart Strootman. They did that by heart – no easy task. Strootman Toonzette An episode from Mary Shelley’s Roman Frankensteinabout a polar expedition and the observation of the ‘Monster’ that goes over the ice with a dog sled. The radical lighting plan suggested aurora borealis, but remained a bit static, and unfortunately you could hardly see the musicians in the dark. The acoustic instruments were embedded in an electronic soundscape that sometimes took on thunderous shapes, with deep basses, rumbling and noise. Strootman stacked rhythmic patterns into complex grooves that were slowly built up, with a wide, inescapable allure. Great was a bluesy slide guitar lick that escalated mercilessly. Expedition is repeated In The Hague and Rotterdam.
A surprising highlight was the Solos and Duos series by musicians from Ensemble Iema, consisting of members of the Talent Academy Van Ensemble Modern. In addition to a percussion classic from Xenakis, there was mainly new music from young composers. Contrabassist Begüm Aslan stole the show with a crazy piece in which she not only played Bas, but also a colorature soprano with a chilling high reach turned out to be.
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Begüm Aslan and Leonard Melcher of the Iema Ensemble during the Gaudeamus Festival.
Photo Andreas Terlaak