Gaudeamus Festival reveals full programme

Utrecht’s celebration of new music, Gaudeamus Festival, has announced the full programme for its 2024 edition. Running from 4 to 8 September in numerous venues across the Dutch city, the festival presents more than 45 concerts, interdisciplinary performances, workshops and lectures, as well as the Gaudeamus Award,

The festival kicks off on 4 September with two performances in association with the annual New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference running alongside the festival this year. More than 250 musical instrument builders, inventors and developers from all over the world will congregate in Utrecht to exchange knowledge on designing and using new interfaces for musical expression and share in six performances associated with the conference.

The festival’s first evening concert will be re: De Staat, in which 17 European composers will share their musical responses to Louis Andriessen’s 1976 reflection on the relationship between music and politics, performed by Dutch chamber orchestra Asko|Schönberg. The project also offers Utrecht school children the opportunity to make their own music in response to De Staat.

The Polish Hashtag Ensemble is also harnessing the creativity of the local community with the development of some new pieces for their Second:ary project in collaboration with volunteers and residents of Utrecht’s Asylum Seekers’ Centre. The ensemble’s performance will see them interpret the stories, smartphone photos and audio fragments collected from centre residents in musical form.

Composer Kate Moore takes the road-less-travelled to join Gaudeamus festival in Utrecht as part of her Beautiful Path project. Inspired by the troubadours of the past Moore is walking in stages from the east of the Netherlands to the westernmost point of Ireland, developing a new music cycle while she walks. Stopping in Utrecht, she will share work in progress Ox Song Part 1: the first part of a composition created during the first months of the walk that led to her birthplace Oxford.

The festival will also welcome back former artist in residence cellist Maya Friedman for her Cellos x BMX project which sees her join forces with with former world freestyle BMX champion Sietse van Berkel in the KF Hein foyer of contemporary music complex TivoliVredenburg. You can find the festival's full 2024 programme here.