news
May 2019
Visitors to this year’s Holland Festival will be able to experience a truly trailblazing premiere with Eight, Michel van der Aa’s latest work of ‘mixed reality’ music theatre. Created with the designer Theun Mosk and virtual reality company The Virtual Dutch Men, ‘Eight’ is a unique fusion of music, theatre VR and visual art, in which audience members wear VR headsets to walk through and manipulate an installation of physical and virtual objects. As they do so, they piece together the story of a woman whose memories are spread across the walls.
The music that plays throughout the installation has been written by Michel Van der Aa and is performed by Kate Miller-Heidke and the Nederlands Kamerkoor. After ‘Sunken Garden’ and ‘The Book of Sand’ (on which the Nederlands Kamerkoor also appeared), ‘Eight’ is the third collaboration between Van der Aa and Miller-Heidke, and the Australian singer and actress will appear on a new album featuring the music of ‘Eight’ alongside new tracks, to be released this autumn.
‘Eight’ is also the first production of the doubleA Foundation, launched by Van der Aa in 2018 to support the production and touring of new and existing works that stretch the boundaries of music theatre, opera, concerts, audiovisual exhibitions, digital art, multimedia and film. Future projects for the Foundation include a film opera, a large-scale work of music theatre and a visual art collaboration.
As well as the Holland Festival, ‘Eight’ is a co-commission of Festival Aix-en-Provence, Beijing Music Festival, KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen and the Helsinki Festival, and after June it will tour to those festivals in 2019 and 2020. A full list of dates, tickets and more information about Eight can be found at eightvr.net.
May 2019
In May Michel van der Aa’s dramatic and explosive concerto for violin and cello akin received both its world premiere (at the Philharmonie in Cologne) and its Dutch premiere (at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw). ‘akin’ was written specially for violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and cellist Sol Gabetta, giving full expression to their extrovert playing styles. In the composer’s own words, ‘akin was inspired by the friendship between these two very special string players, reflected in the score through their sharing of the same musical material and communication with a similar voice.’
Both performances were well received. Neue Musik Zeitung’s Juan Martin Koch wrote that the world premiere provoked “Great cheers” from the audience in Cologne, and made a favourable comparison with Brahms’s Double Concerto in the way ‘akin’ offers a “portrait of two instruments in harmony”. After the Dutch premiere the next day, NRC’s Joep Christenhusz wrote of “a compelling tension that leads to a blistering battle of strings to the rhythm of pounding toms and sharply striking percussion”, and described the piece as “high quality, vintage Van der Aa”.
Peter Lint, writing for Trouw, also praised the soloists, describing them as excelling “with total dedication to and belief in Van der Aa’s notes”; their “forceful, charged performance and expressive stage presence”, said Christenhusz, “kept the audience on the edge of their seats for half an hour”. Finally, wrote Koch after the German performance, “This piece has what it takes – with appropriately explosive soloists – to enter the repertoire.” (read full reviews)
Canadian performances of ‘akin’ are now on the horizon. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, with soloists Nicholas Wright, violin, and Peter Wispelwey, cello, will give the North American premiere at the Orpheum in Vancouver in June. This will be followed in March 2020 by a performance by Simone Lamsma, violin, Harriet Krijgh, cello, and the NAC Orchestra at the Southam Hall in Ottawa.
April 2019
Akin, the new double concerto by Michel van der Aa for violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and cellist Sol Gabetta, receives first performances in Cologne and Amsterdam in May.
Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and cellist Sol Gabetta are soloists in Michel van der Aa’s new double concerto, Akin, premiered at the EIGHT BRIDGES festival in Cologne by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on 9 May. The 25-minute work was commissioned by ACHT BRÜCKEN/Musik für Koln and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with funds from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and Fonds Podiumkunsten.
After the premiere at the Philharmonie in Cologne, the concerto travels on with soloists, orchestra and conductor Peter Eötvös for its Dutch premiere at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on 10 May. North American performances follow with the Vancouver Symphony on 7 June and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa in March 2020.
Michel van der Aa has worked with both soloists on earlier projects – Patricia Kopatchinskaja on the violin work Double and Sol Gabetta on his Grawemeyer Award-winning cello concerto with film Up-close. As the composer notes: “Akin was inspired by the friendship between these two very special string players, reflected in the score through their sharing of the same musical material and communication with a similar voice. When I was deciding on a title I was drawn to an image of identical twins, inseparable and thinking in a related manner to all outward appearances but perhaps with different personalities beneath.”
— David Allenby/Boosey & Hawkes Quarternotes
September 2018
This summer saw Michel van der Aa launch a new artistic foundation dedicated to the development of innovative music theatre works with an international profile.
With Van der Aa as its Artistic Director, the doubleA Foundation aims to support the production and touring of new and existing works that stretch the boundaries of music theatre, opera, concerts, audiovisual exhibitions, digital art, multimedia and film.
At the forefront of the Foundation’s work is the doubleA Lab, which Van der Aa describes as ‘a unique laboratory for twenty-first-century music theatre’. Designed to develop and test new artistic technologies, the Lab will work with and develop new generations of artistic and technical partners, including dramatists, designers, stage managers, directors and VR specialists. With the help of Van der Aa’s diverse international network, young artists will be brought into contact with major international producers, opera houses and festivals to create new and significant work.
The Foundation launches with four new projects already in production and planned for presentation between 2019 and 2021. These are the virtual reality installation Eight – a collaboration with the singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke – and a forthcoming film opera; as well as a large-scale work of music theatre and a visual art collaboration.
The doubleA Lab is supported by the Gieskes-Strijbis Fonds, and the Foundation itself works in close collaboration with the international classical music agency Intermusica, the production company ‘N More, and the publishers Boosey & Hawkes. Its business director is Rosita Wouda. More information about the Foundation and Lab may be found at doubleA.net.
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virtual reality installation ft. Kate Miller-Heidke