28 August 2026 - A review of the past year

It’s been a long time since my last blog post, which is now over a year old. I’ll have to be more disciplined… A lot has happened in the meantime. I’ll go through these events in chronological order in this lengthy blog...  

European Intuitive Music Conference 2025, 24–27 July, Rotterdam

In 2025, our team organised the EIMC-2025 in Rotterdam. We had a lovely venue, the Wijkpaleis on Claes de Vrieselaan. We received a great deal of help from the management of this beautiful building and from one of its musical residents, the composer Andreas Kunstein, who made his room with a grand piano available for workshops.

In total, we had 15 international participants, which is quite typical for an EIMC. We held two public concerts there on 25 and 26 July, which were reasonably well attended.

The EIMC-2026 will take place at the Athens Conservatoire, 16–19 September 2026.

EIMC-2026 performance at Het Wijkpaleis in Rotterdam, 26 July 2025

Lontano’s Wind Tales project

Peter Sterk and I make up Lontano. Since November 2024, we have been working on our project for organ and flutes (contrabass flute, bass flute and piccolo), entitled 'Wind Tales'. We have now had the opportunity to play and make recordings a total of four times at the Danish Seaman’s Church in Rotterdam. Following on from our improvisations, we have documented a number of pieces, two of which have been (almost completely) notated. For us, ‘documenting’ means setting out a number of musical starting points in text, rather than in written notes. We also refer to these as ‘comprovisations’. We hope to release an album on Bandcamp later this year.

Pedal Kings’ No Smoking Project

Ab Bol and I make up Pedal Kings. We have been working on a new album called ‘No Smoking’ for quite some time now. The pieces are based on loops of Ab’s double bass or my bass flute. We both also use various effects pedals, such as pitch shifters and delays. The music consists of soundscapes ranging from 6 to 10 minutes in length, with influences from new jazz and pop. We have already recorded 7 of the 9 pieces. The album is due to be released on Bandcamp later this year.

Performance of Pedal Kings at the Grote- of Sint Janskerk in Schiedam (Netherlands), 9 May 2026

Lagewaardt/Tonino - poetry/music duo

This is also an ongoing project by Selma Lagewaardt (poems/recitation) and myself (electronics and flutes). The current theme is inspired by the biblical text from Saint John: ‘In the beginning was the word.’ The word, however, is both idea/thought and sound. In this way, a poetic and philosophical idea. A small number of poems and musical ideas have now been developed. To be continued.

Free Flight by HET-R

HET-R stands for the collaboration between Etienne Rolin and myself. At the end of March, I visited Etienne in Bordeaux. This was not only great fun, but also productive. As well as having interesting conversations about music and other matters, we carried out some musical experiments. For this, Etienne naturally used the Sampo, a kind of effects unit. Etienne had also recently acquired glissopipes – a type of recorder in various sizes which, like the glissotar, are fitted with a magnetic sliding strip and therefore have no key mechanism. This makes it possible to play these instruments with a continuous range of pitches. Etienne edited the recordings into the album Free Flight released on Bandcamp.

Alongside these duo collaborations, there have been two new ones over the past year that I really enjoyed and which gave me new insights into improvisation and freedom. After all, improvisation is all about freedom. Freedom in playing. Daring. Breaking free from conventions. Creating free forms. The ultimate act of playing as an ideal. Breaking out of your own box, in which you are, in a sense, trapped.

Strasser/Tonino

Stefan Strasser is an improviser from Cologne who uses synthesisers, keyboards and electric guitar. I got in touch with him during the EIMC-2025 in Rotterdam. We agreed to make music offline. That is to say, Stefan sent me a track, to which I then added my own interpretation, and vice versa. This resulted in a Bandcamp album entitled Asynchronous Textures.

In early May, I visited Stefan in Cologne. We recorded a number of 'Synchronous Textures' (a working title of mine): direct, spontaneous improvisations. We both found the result so satisfying that we decided to release the recordings separately on Bandcamp later this year.

Cooper/Lontano

Through Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, one of the two founders of the EIMC (and its predecessor), I came into contact with Constance Cooper. She is a New York-based improviser and composer. She came to the Netherlands and had asked Carl for musical contacts in our country. That was us, Lontano.

Our meeting took place at Peter’s home on 26 May. The recordings we made with her have been compiled into the album Lontano meets Constance Cooper on Bandcamp. Constance showed me how freedom can lead to inspiration. I am impressed by how her approach to improvisation has broken free from conventions.

Very recently, Constance and Lontano had their first ZOOM session. That is to say, we used ZOOM’s technology (audio and video) to improvise. Constance was in New York and Lontano in Rijswijk. This produced some wonderful results. A video of this can be viewed on YouTube, in which the image of the musicians has been abstracted to serve as a kind of focal point for musical action.

Performances

Finally, there were two performances. The first was a performance by Pedal Kings on Saturday 9 May at the opening of Hans Pattist’s photography exhibition 'Een Brede Blik' (A Broad Perspective) in the Grote- of Sint Janskerk in Schiedam (see photo above). Here, we premiered our latest repertoire, 'No Smoking'.

The second was a solo performance 5 July 2026 at Galery SPW59 in Haarlem by me to mark the closing event of the 'EVOLVE' exhibition featuring seven artists: Ingrid van den Oord, Marian Kastelein, Tjitske Koopmans, Francisca Henneman, Tilly Heijster, Nancy Hoogstad and Friedie Kloen. A wonderful exhibition. During this performance, I drew inspiration from the diverse, beautiful works of these artists. Perhaps I’ll publish one of the improvisations I performed there at al later date.

Solo performance at the finissage of the EVOLVE exposition at Galery SPW59  in Haarlem 5 July 2026

20 May 2025 - Pink-purple

Peter Sterk and I (Duo Lontano) recorded the attached improvisation on 3 May. We made no prior arrangements, we just started playing whatever came to mind. So very “intuitive.” I named this piece Pink-purple because of the colours it evokes in me. We used contrabass flute and electronic organ here.

We basically play and improvise together every 3 or 4 weeks. Sometimes we start from a simple musical idea. For example, we combine low (contrabass flute) and high notes (electronic organ), or start from a sequence of notes. Sometimes, we even play from a score prepared by one of us. 

Pink-purple might become part of our “Organ Project” (see a previous blog). In that case, we will try to name and more or less capture the ideas from this piece. The idea of music based on ideas and improvisation on them is called “comprovisation,” a contraction of composition and improvisation.

At the moment, we are reworking improvisations we did at the Danish Church in Rotterdam. In fact, we are transcribing some parts of them to musical notation, i.e. to a score. That will enable us to perform those improvisations again as comprovisations. The challenge then is to maintain enough spontaneity while playing these pieces. Of course, it's not only the score we play but there is a lot of improvisation involved. The tricky part is making believable transitions between the written and improvised parts.