Musical Utopias Friday

Performers	Ensemble Klang, Kika Sprangers, Lise Morrison, Alex Pearl, Anna-Louise Walton, Wim van Egmond, Michael Gordon, Schupp & Van Dijk)
Duration	120 min
Part of	Musical Utopias

Film and music come together during this evening that includes brand new works and some Ensemble Klang classics.

Shadow Forest is an immersive installation and performance by Korean artist Go-Eun Im that continuously adapts to its surroundings and its audience. Through film, live drawing, shadow play and a layered soundscape, a living environment emerges in which visitors are free to move and shape their own experience.

Inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and the forest as a utopian space, Shadow Forest invites moments of stillness, attention and renewed sensitivity to the small, fragile and more-than-human life around us.

Go-Eun Im: “I hope the audience experiences this work like being in a forest: unexpected, layered and alive.”

On 15, 16 & 17 January Go-Eun will present a special live performance within the installation, 19.00-19.45. There’s only space for a small audience, so arrive on time, first come, first serve!

After that, the installation will be open to visitors throughout the evening

Credits Shadow Forest

Direction and Production: Go-Eun Im Performance: Go-Eun Im, Igor Sevcuk Music: Heiner Goebbels, Post-Industrial Boys (George Dzodzuashvili) Cast: Marika Asatiani & Lila Dzodzuashvili

Commissioned by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul and Busan Museum of Contemporary Art

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 in which flashing images can be seen, combined with flickering visuals and music, full of illusion and magic, inspired by historical thaumotropes through to today’s GIFs.

Als je een iets soepelere, meer artistieke of juist formelere Engelse versie wilt, kan ik die ook maken.

Anna-Louise Walton, Wim van Egmond & Ensemble Klang

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 created a brand new work exploring the magic of organic systems.

Reflecting on his work, Wim told us: ‘I’ve been doing this for about thirty years. Every time I discover a new little creature, I see things I’ve never seen before. It’s an endless world’.

In collaboration with composer Anna-Louise Walton, Swarms explores the magic of organic systems, translating microscopic movement and structure into an immersive musical experience.

Ensemble Klang & Schupp & Van Dijk

A hyperactive, hyper-energetic, ever-circling adventure into wonderlands of impossible geometric shapes and forms, Michael Gordon’s Hyper takes as its point of inspiration the Penrose Stairs, used in M.C. Escher’s art, to conjure a musical work in continual ascent.

Performed in an arrangement for Ensemble Klang, Hyper is a true Klang classic and is reinforced for this performance with video art by Schupp & Van Dijk.

The film by Schupp & Van Dijk was recorded and made during the first corona-lockdown (March-June 2020): each performer recorded their part individually to be then layered on top of each other for the finished result.

The starting point for this real-time performance is an American popular science series from the 1950s by the Moody Institute of Science. The bizarre and hypnotic images from the series are remixed live by Sjeng Schupp, supplemented with sound collages by composer Michiel van Dijk, who draws inspiration from electronic music from the same period. This results in a highly interactive and fragmented performance, performed by two soulmates who are perfectly attuned to each other.

Kika Sprangers & band

NSJ Compositieopdracht 2025: Kika Sprangers

In the Studio saxophonist and composer Kika Sprangers presents her latest work: The Way Wild Rivers Flow, an adaptation of the composition she wrote this summer for North Sea Jazz 2025. In this quintet, Sprangers delivers a dynamic performance in which her characteristic lyricism and rich harmonies play the leading role.

Sprangers’ music is melodious, compelling, and layered, with a refined interplay between composition and improvisation. Expect a concert full of imagination, emotion, and ensemble playing of the highest quality.