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Looking back on Bijlmer Klassiek

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Bijlmer Parktheater are now organising the boundary-crossing Bijlmer Klassiek chamber music series together. This season’s final concert will be on 14 May. We’re already looking back with pleasure at this first series.

Actor Kenneth Herdigein and in the backgroungviolinist Joanna Westers image: Naomi Rijkaard

The cross-over series Bijlmer Klassiek, previously organized by violist Michael Gieler, has been embraced by the Concertgebouw Orchestra. This season, they put on five well-attended and well-received concerts, each time with a different orchestral musician as curator, working closely with the Bijlmer Parktheater. Musical styles flowed into one another, and fruitful connections were made between music and such diverse worlds as theatre, dance and spoken word.

The audiences easily found their way to the Anton de Komplein.

1 - The Extra Mile

Contrabassist Nicholas (Nicky) Schwartz kicked off the season in October with The Extra Mile, in which he performed with clarinettist Olivier Patey, violinist Diet Tilanus, spoken-word artist Zaïre Krieger, Ukrainian pianists Borys Fedorov and Tatiana Abayeva, and talented young piano students from the Davidsbündler Music Academy.

2 - Bal Masqué

Harpist Anneleen Schuitemaker played with fellow string players in a spooky performance aptly titled Bal Masqué. Actor Kenneth Herdigein made the evening suspenseful with his rendition of Edgar Allan Poe’s horror story The Mask of the Red Death, and Gregory Shaggy got even Death to dance to the sounds of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre.

3 - From Bachianas to Bossanova

Cellist Johan van Iersel thought up From Bachianas to Bossanova, a a relaxed Club Night at the Bijlmerpark Theatre. He played with other orchestra musicians, jazz singer Laura Polence, guitarists Daniel de Moraes and Breno Viricimo, and saxophonist/flutist Lucas Figueiredo Santana.

4 - Deep River

In Deep River, clarinettist Martin Fröst played music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Benny Goodman and others, joined by pianist Daahoud Salim, jazz singer Deborah J. Carter and the Alma Quartet.

Last Bijlmer Klassiek concert this season

5 – The Southeast at home in Zuidoost

The season’s final concert was in the morning on Sunday 14 May. Principal horn player Laurens Woudenberg, dancer Rutkay Özpinar and musicians including Emmanuel Boateng, Amaria Kabba, Sorin Spasinovici and Selim Doğru connected south-eastern Europe and Amsterdam’s Zuidoost (‘south-east’) district.

Five more amazing concerts are in store next season!