SOUNDING [VHVR] HERE with Moving Strings, Volksorkest & many more

line-up; Moving Strings, Volksorkest, Goodiepal, Dauphine Van der Velpen and Patrick Ellis & Eric Giraudet de Boudemange and Sam Zanardo

We have often seen speed dates and blind dates between artists, but how often do we see them between event series? VHVR and Sounding Here are giving it a go to share their extremely different curation styles with you all. Here’s what we overheard:

Sounding Here: What is your new year’s resolution?
VHVR: I would really love to do a collaboration with you…..
SH: Ooo I am so flattered…but then it’s going to be a super long event no?!
VHVR; Yeah let's forget about it
SH: Ah, you give up too easily! What if that’s a GOOD THING?
VHVR; But i have the focus bandwidth of a toddler, what can i say?
SH: Then it’s good to have loads of different things all happening, in shorter sets that show us something totally different each time…you won’t get bored at all…maybe?
VHVR: In that case… uhmmmmmmmmm… maybe...
SH: But what should the theme be? I like experiments, what is your thing?
VHVR: The hybrid is my thing… connecting stuff that doesn't connect easily
SH: It is also almost valentine’s day then!
VHVR: Yes whatever.
SH: Ok, not so related I guess…but honestly I never know what will happen so…that’s just how it goes. Is there anything that I should know?
VHVR: I already invited Goodiepal and Volksorkest, is that experimental enough for your taste?
SH: Yes, and I can bet you’ll love Eric Giraudet’s newest performance with glass bong puppets…and Patrick Ellis’ video composition…and …a load of movement and music with Moving Strings - is that hybrid enough for you??
VHVR: Araaagh…. I WANTED TO BOOK MOVING STRINGS!!!! Now you did it, we can’t turn back… so let’s do it.
SH: Ok…I’ll tell everyone to get ready for an epic, out-of-this-world, weird and undefinable variety show from VHVR + Sounding Here….!!!
VHVR: Yesss, finally…AVANT GARDE for the MASSES!

J.H. Thompson Volksorkest is a musical collective led by M.J.H. Thompson. The band includes core members Arie Hoekstra, Sjoerd Frankrijk, and Milo Mooi Wilten, along with a rotating cast of about ten other musicians who contributed to their debut album.
The band was formed during a period of transition for Thompson after his previous band, KIEFF, disbanded. After eight years with KIEFF, Thompson found himself disconnected from the music they were making and was inspired to pursue something new. Drawing from a collection of songs he had written over several years, Thompson assembled a group of close friends to bring these songs to life, prioritizing enjoyment, authenticity, and a sense of playful experimentation over technical perfection.
M.J.H. Thompson Volksorkest’s sound is an eclectic mix of rock, post-punk, and country, drawing inspiration from a wide range of artists, including Kevin Ayers, J.M.A. Biesheuvel, and The Shaggs. Their debut album reflects this diverse palette, blending spontaneous creativity with an unconventional approach to songwriting and recording. The process was intentionally relaxed and organic, beginning in a friend’s studio and evolving through contributions from various friends in different settings. The result is a collection of songs filled with quirky observations, offbeat humor, and genuine expression, capturing a wide spectrum of human experience and emotion.

Moving Strings
Shana Raine, violin
Alex Welch, viola
Irene Sorozábal, voice & recorders
Camille Verhaak, clarinets
Maya Felixbrot, viola.
Moving Strings is a non-hierarchical, Amsterdam-based female collective of musicians, exploring the relation and boundaries between movement, body, sound and space. We are mainly stringed instruments players, but also winds, percussion and voice. Musicians with extensive experience in classical and contemporary music, and passion for improvisation and multi stylistic musicianship.
We have many musical traditions to inspire from, yet we feel free of discipline, as we’re new passengers on an artistic adventure, in the land of movement. With imagination, fantasy and listening, we search for an inclusive artistic language, one that contains just one word for ‘sound’ and ‘movement’; An interdisciplinary music practice that invites the physical body to join the celebration of play and creation. We bridge and connect between music and different disciplines and movement practices: somatic movement practices like Body Mind Centering, Laban Bartenieff Movement System and Alexander technique, various meditation techniques, mime, Koodiyatam, performance-art and text. Moving Strings research and create together since 2018.
https://youtu.be/xXnqBsa93Jw?si=P1OrVKUKihImpU0D

Pathways, Passages
Dauphine Van der Velpen (soprano saxophone) and Patrick Ellis (composer)
A new multi-media work for soprano saxophone, fixed electronics and visuals. The piece is inspired by the coming together of two collaborators and the journey that they took up to their meeting point (in this case of the piece, we filmed locations that we have lived, worked and resided in); the work also explores the relationship between live instruments and MIDI audio, as well as digital and analogue video film. Duration wise I'm think it will be around 10-15 minutes in total.
Dauphine Van der Velpen is a dynamic, Belgian saxophone player, living in Tilburg. In 2021, she graduated as Master of Music in Fontys Academy of Music and Performing Arts. Dauphine mainly works on minimal and (post)modern music in solo and chamber music projects, including works by Philip Glass, Anthony Fiumara, Jacob Ter Veldhuis, and more.
Patrick Ellis (b. 1994) is a composer whose work has been presented at numerous festivals and concert series across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australasia. His music has been described as "focused, intense and unrelenting" (Gaudeamus Jury 2024), with much of it utilising limited musical materials, small developments, and juxtapositions.
Due to the work being a multimedia piece with visuals, there might moving video images that could trigger someone with epilepsy or who has sensitivity to sudden changing images.

PROPER LOVE
Eric Giraudet de Boudemange - voice - image - dance
Sam Zanardo - voice - image - dance - composer
The performance is a spin off of Corrupted Blood a performance and a film developed by EGdB 2 years ago. The work involves 2 performers activating sensual glass puppets, as they question themselves on the boundaries between their own bodies and their avatars/puppet. Proper Love is divided in 2 short acts: The first part focuses on the handling of the puppets and poetic readings. In the second act, we dive inside the translucent bodies of the puppets with an endoscope, projecting the live stream at the back of the stage.
Eric Giraudet de Boudemange (1983, FR-ARG) works with mixed media ‘collages’ reflecting upon cultural identity in a global context. The study of folkloric practices through field research is often his doorway to explore economical and cultural power relationships on a given territory. His projects navigate a forest of references from pop culture, sociological studies and autobiographical tales. The result is a playful and darkhumored visual language walking on a thin line between the grotesque and the beautiful.
Sam Zanardo [she/they], is a visual and performance artist born in Italy and currently based in the Netherlands. Coming from a dance and martial arts background, the notions of endurance, constriction, and repetition have been central points in their practice. In particular, Sam has been investigating how transformation can be possible within a certain given structure or a set of pre-determined rules. Working through a physicality which aims at exhaustion as a trajectory, together with the choice of using mass mediatic platforms as mediums to display these actions, has been a way for them to address subjectivity as a constant de-composition and re-configuration process.
The performance includes some sexual content, but no nudity.
https://vimeo.com/805891609

GOODIEPAL
Goodiepal or Gæoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen, whose given name is Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester, is a Danish/Faroese experimental electronic musician, performance artist, composer and lecturer, as well as a fully educated horologist. His work engages with the past, present, and future of computer music, compositional practices and resonance computing, and his idea of Radical Computer Music. His tours have included 150 universities internationally, and now finally he will honor WORM with his presence...? Ah, no, he's been a regular in Rotterdam (not at the university though), knows lots of Rotta musicians and artists and done many things in different places and setups... still he will alway surprise with new ideas, thoughts, lectures and even music...