Musical Utopias Friday

Saxophonist and composer Kika Sprangers presents The Way Wild Rivers Flow: new work that builds on her composition commission for North Sea Jazz 2025. After performing the piece with twelve vocalists from the Netherlands Chamber Choir, she now returns to a more intimate setting: her own quintet, without choir.

In this version, the spotlight falls on the distinctive interplay of the musicians, Sprangers’ lyrical saxophone voice, and her richly layered harmonies. She continues to seek a balance between freedom and form, where composition and improvisation flow naturally together.

Expect a concert alive with imagination, emotion, and finely tuned ensemble playing — music that keeps unfolding with every moment.

Composer Lise Morrison has roots in South Africa, and her instrumental and electroacoustic works explore repetition and subtle changes within fragile environments. Together with visual artist Alex Pearl, she creates a hypnotic collection of flickering images and music, full of illusion and magic, inspired by historical thaumatrope devices to contemporary GIFs.

Micro-videographer Wim van Egmond captures stop-motion films at the intersection of science and art, that play with human perception. Together with composer Anna-Louise Walton he creates a brand-new work exploring the magic of organic systems.

This section of the program concludes with an Ensemble Klang classic: Michael Gordon’s hyperactive and frenetic Hyper, accompanied by visuals from Schupp & Van Dijk. The tight symmetries and canons of the music are mirrored in a bizarre, animated world where clouds of abstract patterns dance around.