Utrecht’s Gaudeamus Festival launches full programme

Utrecht’s Gaudeamus Festival has announced the programme for its upcoming 2023 edition. Running from 6 to 10 September in the Dutch town of Utrecht, the festival focuses on innovative young artists and will include more than 50 concerts, multidisciplinary performances, workshops and lectures as well as the Gaudeamus Award.

The festival kicks off on 6 September with a performance of work by all five nominees for the Gaudeamus Award by new music ensemble Asko|Schönberg. These works form part of an opening programme including performances by composer, harpist and ‘musical journalist’ Andrea Voets alongside recorder player Sarah Jeffery, composer-keyboardist Luke Deane and cellist and composer Rafaele Andrade who performs on her self-designed, 3D-printed instrument the ‘Knurl’.

Jelmer de Moed will join the festival to give the premiere of Schaduwspel (‘Shadow Play’), a new piece commissioned by de Moed from Amarante Nat and Nuno Lobo and the first production of the clarinettist’s newly founded Studio De Moed. The Amsterdam-based Maat Saxophone Quartet will also premiere new commissions by young composers including Peter Vigh, Frieda Gustavs and Camiel Jansen before touring the programme across the Netherlands and Portugal this season.

Cellist, singer and composer Mabe Fratti will bring her unique combination of contemporary elements (like shoegaze and dreampop) and historical artforms like Gregorian chants and Sephardic music to the festival for a performance at TivoliVredenburg with her band and a contemporary choir from London while violinist Joe Puglia explores the unique personality and voice of a variety of violins.

The festival will also include a musical odyssey by Kate Moore, composed as she walks from the Dutch town of Oss to Europe’s westernmost point, the Irish island of Skellig Michael as well as composers’ responses to Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato in celebration of the composers’ 100th birthday and even a performance in a whole new genre: making music by juggling. The closing concert will be given by Rotterdam-based Rwandan composer Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman which immerses audiences in a hybrid soundworld to give a portrait of the composer’s 113-year-old grandfather.