International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht 2022

I had to wait for two seasons, and each time corona was the game-breaker. But now it is finally going to happen! At the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht, Camerata Trajectina will play my song cycle Aan de Bruid on poems by Ingmar Heytze on 30 December at 17.00.

With this programme, Camerata pays tribute to the city of Utrecht and its history in music and poetry. This ranges from Leonardus Gouwerack’s Het Zangprieeltjen from 1646 to Utrecht voor Beginners en Gevorderden from 2015 by Ingmar Heytze, who will also be reciting his own verses. A Utrecht programme full of love and disappointment, hope and despair, from the 17th century to the present under the motto The Sound of the City.

Internationaal Kamermuziek Festival - Camerata Trajectina Together with former city poet Ingmar Heytze, Camerata Trajectina performs the most beautiful, funny and moving songs from these old and new collections. The city is the scene and plays a prominent role in the flaming passion, dark despair, fledgling uncertainty and bitter disappointment aroused by the Utrecht ‘beauties’.

My To the Bride uses five poems by Ingmar Heytze from his collection of the same name. A small anthology of unfulfilled loves in as many musical idioms.
The music was written for the anniversary of the Kromme Rijn Concerts in 2016, then for a line-up of mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin, viola and cello. In collaboration with Camerata, it has now been arranged for Baroque instruments: harp, lute, viola da gamba, recorder. The modern equal temperament has been changed to 17th-century meantone tuning.

I look forward to hearing my songs in such a unique program, in the presence of Ingmar and played by Camerata on their beautiful historical instruments!

Friday 30 December 17.00
TivoliVredenburg, Hertzzaal
Camerata Trajectina with tenor Nico van der Meel and poet Ingmar Heytze (recitation)
The Sound of the City
Tickets via

TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht

About me

Musical beauty and simplicity are my aim. My guiding principle is the classical European tradition. Folk music, church music and Early Music are the sources to which I return to seek new melodic beauty. I value musical craftsmanship and intuition highly. Musicians are my first audience. It is their virtuosic interplay, comic or dramatic, but always emotionally charged, that is the musical theater my music presents to the listener. The sounds I cherish most are those that through the musician’s hearts, breath and hands bear the mark of their personal interpretation.
Chamber music is, therefore, central to me – I have written for the Bennewitz Quartet and Harry-Imre Dijkstra, the Skampa Quartet, Rosanne Philippens, the Bartók Trio, the Utrecht String Quartet and many others.
My chamber music for recorders has a special place in my work and is played in large numbers by amateurs. The CD Kadanza is a fruit of decades of collaboration with the best professionals who were often also the best teachers.
For me, choral music is also a species of chamber music. It should challenge and offer musical satisfaction to those many amateur singers – that I am one of.

My music features individual performers – to convey a thought, an emotion, and a story to the audience in a virtuoso and intense fashion.

In rehearsal and performance, the performers and I learn a lot from each other. Sometimes their improvisations are included in the musical story. Scores will always be adapted to their needs.

The interplay between performer and composer is absolutely essential in newly written music. As is the interplay between sponsor and composer.

Would you like me to rehearse with you or do you want to know more about a piece?

Do you want me to write a piece for a particular line-up or event?

Please let me know and I will contact you.

Besides composing, I lecture in New Music at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, with a focus on chamber music and music aesthetics. Some of the writing and thinking that I do there can be found in the ‘text’ section.