Webstrings: Remy van Kesteren on life & harp
New management!
Today, I am very happy to announce that I signed a three year contract with the agency Pioneers in Culture! Pieter Pryck will be my new manager for all solo activities. Great plans are in the making; you’ll here more about them right here!
Pieter Pryck has many years’ experience in the world of classical music and the performing arts. Educated as a professional flutist at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in the ‘70’s, he was appointed co-creator and producer for the department of Classical Music at the AVRO in 1980, the foremost Broadcasting Service in The Netherlands for classical music.
During that time he was responsible for all projects with the radio orchestras and live broadcasts of the major national orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He conceived and developed the format for the Sunday Morning Concert Series at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 1995, which since that time has become the most important and certainly most successful concert series for classical music in the Netherlands.
From 1996-2005 he was manager of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, where he very successfully collaborated with Jaap van Zweden as principal conductor. The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra undertook several international tours to the UK, Spain and the United States of America with a special highlight performance at Carnegie Hall, New York.
For many years he was chairman of the Dutch Foundation for the Performing Arts in both the Music Committee and the Committee for Foreign Scholarships. He is music advisor to the Culture Board of The Dutch Local Government Bank (Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten).
Pieter Pryck has written several articles on classical music, was critic for many years and has been announcer at many classical concerts. As interim manager for artistic and business affairs, he worked with several Dutch orchestras including the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir Ton Koopman and recently with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic: both orchestras belong to the Music Centre of the Dutch Broadcasting Organizations (MCO) in Hilversum.
Pryck is a networker pur sang, with many and varied contacts and inputs in the rich network of the performing arts for classical music in The Netherlands and abroad.
Abroad
The first half of 2011, I will be abroad for several concerts. Two weeks ago, I had a great weekend in Rome, Italy, where I gave a concert and masterclasses for Italian harpists. It was my first masterclass ever and it turned out to be an unexpected revelation. Truly inspiring to work with such talented harpists!
In April I will go on holiday to charge up for a series of performances in Europe and South America, and the Summer of Music in August. Besides many concerts with ensembles and solo recitals in the Netherlands, I will go to Brazil in May to perform twice at the 6th International Harp Festival in Rio de Janeiro. In June I will play the harp concerto by C. Reinecke in Switzerland and later visit Catalonia in Spain for a recital and masterclasses.
I hope to meet some of you at these occasions. In any case I am looking forward to them all!
Essence
I was asked to write down what to me is the essence of music. I guess for me this is pretty much it:
To me, the essence of music is the expressive capacity of a personal story. The power of a soloist who plays honestly and purely, without concessions or compromises, but with a large degree of risk-taking and daring, is what inspires and drives me in music. It is this uniqueness, this ‘creation’ of music, that is the core of my desire to perform.
Happy 2011!
Dear everyone, hereby my delayed best wishes to you all: be in health and have a year full of great music!
For me, 2010 was a busy year with lots of new adventures. For the first couple of months of past year I was more of an organizer than a musician when we launched the first Dutch Harp Festival with a large group of musicians, students and partners. After this incredible, overwhelming week I started studying the French language before going back in my old routine of traveling all the corners of our country for many different concerts.
January 2011 continues in pretty much the same pace, with three great concerts in its three first days. Having not quite experienced much free time during christmas either due to the trio42 concert tour (apart from some great nights out to see Cirque du Soleil and the Tsjakovsky Perm Ballet) and with Noel Wan’s Dutch Harp Tour coming up, I will be struggling to keep you all posted. Fortunately, short messages are easily written, so keep up to date by following me on twitter or facebook, where I intend to leave and reply to messages whenever there is a spare moment.
The Dutch Harp Tour ’11 will be the upbeat for the new Dutch Harp Festival/Competition in 2012. Plans are being made as we speak and believe me: you don’t want to miss it! The compulsory program for the competition will be out on the 20th of January. For the rest, so far 2011 will bring lots of concerts, including some nice trips to London, Rome and Switzerland and off course the NJO Summer of Music.
Summing up, another full and great year. I hope to meet you all along the way!
Interview Vrije Geluiden
Nieuwsbrief NJO
Jong harptalent Remy van Kesteren zal tijdens de NJO Muziekzomer 2011 de rol vervullen van young artist in residence. Na Lisanne Soeterbroek (viool), Felicia van den End (fluit), Frederieke Saeijs (viool) en Anna voor de Wind (klarinet) is het aan Remy om ons te betoveren met zijn spel. Remy zal tijdens de NJO Muziekzomer verschillende projecten aangaan. Wat precies, daar wordt nog hard aan gewerkt.
Afgelopen zomer speelde Remy al de sterren van de hemel in het NJO Schubert Orkest o.l.v. Bas Wiegers. Hij nam de solopartij in het romantische Danse Sacrée et Danse Profane voor zijn rekening en oogstte daarmee veel lof. De jonge talenten van TV Gelderland Summer School hebben Remy en de toenmalige young artist in residence Anna voor de Wind de afgelopen zomer gevolgd. Zij maakten een aantal impressies die u op onze filmpagina kunt bekijken.
Afgelopen zondag was Remy te gast in het VPRO televisieprogramma Vrije Geluiden. Hij bracht prachtig werk van Ryohei Hirose en Manuel de Falla ten gehore. U kunt de herhaling van de uitzending (met o.a. Claron McFadden samen met de Konrad Koselleck Big Band) aanstaande zaterdag 30 oktober om 9.00 uur op Nederland 1 bekijken.
TV
Remy just had TV recordings for Vrije Geluiden, a Dutch music programme that invited him to play Hirose’s Elegia and De Falla’s Spanish Dance from La Vida Breve. Here Remy right before his performance. It will be a programme with beautiful music and a short interview by Melchior Huurdeman broadcasted on Sunday the 24th of October at 10.30 on Ned1 (and repeated on Saturday the 30th of October at 9.00 on Ned1).
NJO Artist in Residence 2011
Remy has been invited to be the NJO Artist in Residence for the 2011 Muziekzomer (Summer of Music). He will have the freedom to create different projects with lots of great music, musicians and composers (such as ’11 Composer in Residence Kaija Saariaho). Be the first to read all about it on this website, later this year.
This weekend, Remy will also play during the 2010 Muziekzomer. You can listen to him and the NJO Schubert Orchestra in Debussy’s beautiful Danses Sacrée et Profane, performed throughout the province of Gelderland. See the agenda for all the dates.
New website
New season, renewed website. Enjoy!
Debussy in 2009
Remy van Kesteren plays C. Debussy’s Danse Sacree et Profane with the Utrecht Conservatorium String Orchestra led by Chris Duindam: