ThijsNoisia

   NNO in the club: a project where the North Netherlands Symphony Orchestra ( www.nno.nu) takes a delegation of their players to the club to play classical music in a different environment. They invite an artist who's at home in club environments to collaborate. In this case the delegation consists of a woodwind quintet: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, french horn. They will be joined by a pianist and a percussionist. And I will be representing the nightclub side of things.

   When Marcel Mandos (creative director at NNO) and Jorinde Keesmaat (stage director) asked us to get involved in this project it couldn't have come at a better time!

I'd just been getting more into 20th century and contemporary classical music (Messiaen, Ravel, Ligeti) and I was reading "The Rest Is Noise" by Alex Ross. Before that I was listening to Bach a lot, even watching youtube tutorials on counterpoint writing.

This felt like the perfect opportunity to stop making abstract imaginary schemes about combining classical and electronic and actually do it. For real.

   So I said yes to Marcel and Jorinde, on one condition: that I'd get to write a non-electronic piece for the ensemble besides the "club versions" of the pieces on the playlist. He agreed, and here we are.

I've done four tunes - "remixes" - using elements from the pieces that will be performed in the club. For three of them i've made recordings of the quintet, the fourth one will feature the musicians live. They're all pretty dark :D

And I've composed a 10 minute mini-suite in 3 parts for the woodwind ensemble. They're all pretty dark too!

A picture from the rehearsal / recording session:

That awesome device Marijke is holding is a contrabassoon and it goes down to a low C - 33 Hz!!!

   We will try to make the recordings of the night available to listen online after the show!

The performance is held november 15th at club Vera in Groningen. Because tickets have sold out so fast we will do 2 shows. After the second show the club will stay open for an "afterparty": I will try to play a DJ set within the classical meets electronic theme. If I can find enough good tunes that is :D Von Nohrfeldt and Fre4knc will be joining me in the DJ-booth.

   In may 2015 there will be a second edition, with a different delegation from the NNO. I have asked for lots of strings :D

   I will be writing updates and posting pictures about the show (and answering questions if you got 'em) on www.twitter.com/thijsnoisia

Thijs

Links:

Club Vera site (dutch): http://www.vera-groningen.nl/agenda/mainstage/nno-noisia-nno-club-0

NNO site: http://www.nno.nu/engels

Von Nohrfeldt confronts the mystic and eery side of 20th century classical music with the rhythmic drive of experimental techno, glitch and IDM. http://www.vonnohrfeldt.com/