ted hearne
bio // calendar
// music // links
// sounds
// katrina ballads
NEW AUDIO:
vessels (2008) // make it out (2008) // you have aids (2008)
//
mass for st. mary's (2008) // i remember (2007)
//
cordavi and fig (2007) // patriot (2007)
bio // calendar
// music // links
// sounds
// katrina ballads
NEW AUDIO:
vessels (2008) // make it out (2008) // you have aids (2008)
//
mass for st. mary's (2008) // i remember (2007)
//
cordavi and fig (2007) // patriot (2007)
mass for st. mary's (2008) // i remember (2007) //
cordavi and fig (2007) // patriot (2007)
first rehearsal at Gaudeamus
i arrived in Amsterdam on monday, and will be here until sunday, participating in the 2009 Gaudeamus Festival. there are 14 of us composers under 30 competing for the top prize, but along with all our nominated works is lots of music from all over the world. there are 3 concerts a day - and, this being holland, the general public seems to give a shit! (or, at least there have been sizable audiences)
anyway. i was shocked and flustered to realize, when i get to the opening reception for the festival, an hour after i arrived via train from berlin, that i needed to take the train back east, to a little town called Apeldoorn an hour and a half out of Amsterdam, to attend my rehearsals. i’ve been hooked up with this group called De Ereprijs, who will be playing some movements from Katrina Ballads on wednesday, and this is where they’re based. and the train departs at 6:30. (this i’m told at 6:10.)
so i rush to the train station and can’t find nothing about no ‘apeldoorn’ so i go to the information desk and stand behind a couple of older ladies asking many slow questions about what is in my opinion much less pressing shit and finally get to the front of the line where i am informed my train departs in 2 minutes! on the track way down at the end that long-ass hallway! so i’m unable to escape from my inevitable roll as running, sweating, hulking american, but i do make the train.
when i get to apeldoorn, i realize the map the guy back in amsterdam has drawn for me is missing some key information. such as the address or phone number of the rehearsal location. also missing cross-streets, directions and any legible words in any language. so i get horribly lost and wander around this quaint little town for an hour or so. around 8pm (when my rehearsal is scheduled to start) i freak out a bit and make the mistake of turning on my phone (it’s not like i even had a phone number i could call), and then of course i immediately get 12 text messages which have built up on the server, two of which are “free texts” from AT&T informing me that my wireless plan does not apply here and i will be charged the international rate of $15.99/1MB of data transmitted. and other ten of which are from random people back home and can pretty much all be summed up as saying essentially: “yo what up.” so now i’m sure i owe like $200. (this is what i get for year after year sending people text messages that say “hoadie” and “shabooms” or some such nonsense, for no reason whatsoever, despite their perplexed pleas for me to for the love of god stop it.)
so i finally ask a dutch couple i encounter on the street if they can please please please help me make sense of this map, and while they too can’t decipher it, they have a pretty good idea of where De Ereprijs might rehearse… so i am walked over there and arrive 15 minutes late, with my heart beating in my teeth. (see, ‘running, sweating, hulking american.’)
luckily, De Ereprijs turns out to be awesome. it is a true pleasure to work with them. they are determined musicians with real heart; warm people with a surprisingly biting sense of humor. i’m into it. a woman with the ensemble has made brownies, and it’s not till halfway through the rehearsal that i realize they’re for me - because i’m singing “Brownie.” i mean, how sweet is that?!
Jeroen van Dijk is playing the horn solo in the 2nd movement of KB (“when we awoke, it was to that familiar phrase: new orleans dodged a bullet.”) he’s a great player. rather than doing the looping in this movement live, jeroen has made a sick recording in his home studio.
i rode the train back with Hans Witteman, the clarinet player, and as we were kicking back a few beers, he told me he’s been in the group for 13 years and he is one of the members with the shortest tenure. Wim Boerman (who is conducting my piece on wednesday) founded the ensemble 30 years ago. i’m told he started the group because nobody wanted to do new music in east holland and so he got a scrappy group of players together and they did what they had to do. when they entered their first big festival they blew everyone away, but the panel of judges refused to award them first prize - out of pride or something, or as hans put it, because they were not “conventional enough” - so instead they received the honorable mention, or “Honor Prize.” In Dutch the Honor Prize is De Ereprijs. and as if that wasn’t an awesome enough justification for a group name, Ereprijs is also apparently a kind of blue weed that will grow in any conditions whatsoever, will push up from one little bit of soil through feet of cement. so i am now a huge fan of this group. and best of all, they clearly could care less about the scene: it’s clear that they play music because they love to do it.
