Ear to the Earth: Hoogtij Festival - Energiekas
‘Stroom’ is een interactieve performance waarin luisterstations met hydrofoons en onderwateropnames worden gecombineerd met live muziek, uitgevoerd door Ear to the Earth. Deze voorstelling biedt een voorproefje van hun aankomende project ‘Stroomopwaarts’, dat zich richt op onderwater geluidsvervuiling. Ear to the Earth wil nieuwsgierig maken, en zich met jou verwonderen over onze eigen leefomgeving. Ze geloven dat zorgen voor onze omgeving begint bij deze verwondering.
New European Ensemble: Ticket to Aleppo
Discover the soul of Aleppo and immerse yourself in a musical journey through this ancient city. In living rooms, souks, taxis and cafés, songs of longing, resilience and desire can be heard. Spiritual voices blend with the sounds of the city, while the air is filled with the scent of coffee, pepper and cinnamon.
A Ticket to Aleppo brings together Arab and Western musicians in a warm and vibrant musical dialogue. Together, they paint a rich musical landscape of classical Arabic songs, refined maqams and exuberant improvisations. Instruments such as the oud, qanun and riq come together with violin, viola, cello and flute.
Spoken texts are in English.
New European Ensemble: Ticket to Aleppo
Discover the soul of Aleppo and immerse yourself in a musical journey through this ancient city. In living rooms, souks, taxis and cafés, songs of longing, resilience and desire can be heard. Spiritual voices blend with the sounds of the city, while the air is filled with the scent of coffee, pepper and cinnamon.
A Ticket to Aleppo brings together Arab and Western musicians in a warm and vibrant musical dialogue. Together, they paint a rich musical landscape of classical Arabic songs, refined maqams and exuberant improvisations. Instruments such as the oud, qanun and riq come together with violin, viola, cello and flute.
Spoken texts are in English.
New European Ensemble: Voices in Rome - Romaeuropa Festival
Resistance is more than an act; it is a voice that demands to be heard. In the moving song cycle Voices from 1973, composer Hans Werner Henze gives the floor to twenty resistance poets from across the globe. Written in the shadow of the Vietnam War, this ninety-minute masterpiece stands as an impressive tribute to the human spirit. New European Ensemble performs this timely work under the baton of conductor Carlo Boccadoro, alongside soloists Carina Vinke (alto) and Peter Tantsits (tenor). The instrumental line-up is unique: in addition to their own instruments, the musicians collectively play about seventy different instruments from various worldwide traditions — from Africa and Asia to South America. The result is a profound soundscape that invites the listener: dare to listen, dare to discover.
Henze himself was an outsider who left Germany for Italy, fleeing both homophobia and the strict musical laws of his contemporaries. He regarded Voices as his own ‘Lied von der Erde’, concluding with a hopeful vision: a pre-Columbian flower festival dreaming of a world at peace. This autumn, New European Ensemble brings this extraordinary composition to the Romaeuropa Festival. It is a rare opportunity to experience one of Henze’s most haunting works, in which the cry for justice resonates as loudly today as it did fifty years ago.
New European Ensemble: Ticket to Aleppo
Discover the soul of Aleppo and immerse yourself in a musical journey through this ancient city. In living rooms, souks, taxis and cafés, songs of longing, resilience and desire can be heard. Spiritual voices blend with the sounds of the city, while the air is filled with the scent of coffee, pepper and cinnamon.
A Ticket to Aleppo brings together Arab and Western musicians in a warm and vibrant musical dialogue. Together, they paint a rich musical landscape of classical Arabic songs, refined maqams and exuberant improvisations. Instruments such as the oud, qanun and riq come together with violin, viola, cello and flute.
Spoken texts are in English.
New European Ensemble: Ticket to Aleppo
Discover the soul of Aleppo and immerse yourself in a musical journey through this ancient city. In living rooms, souks, taxis and cafés, songs of longing, resilience and desire can be heard. Spiritual voices blend with the sounds of the city, while the air is filled with the scent of coffee, pepper and cinnamon.
A Ticket to Aleppo brings together Arab and Western musicians in a warm and vibrant musical dialogue. Together, they paint a rich musical landscape of classical Arabic songs, refined maqams and exuberant improvisations. Instruments such as the oud, qanun and riq come together with violin, viola, cello and flute.
Spoken texts are in English.
Ear to the Earth: Gaudeamus 'Stroom
In the short experiential performance Stroom ensemble Ear to the Earth enters in a dialogue with hydrophone listening stations and underwater recordings. It is a preview of their upcoming project Stroomopwaarts, which engages with underwater noise pollution.
Ear to the Earth wants to spark curiosity about our living environment. A sense of wonderment that can form the basis of caring for our surroundings. In their one-of-a-kind performances they create impromptu musical instruments from natural materials and found objects, and they invite the audience to participate. This way, they aim to give a voice to places, things, and creatures that are unable to speak for themselves.
Stroom is part of our installation program Resisting Waters. Check the full programme of Resisting Waters.
New European Ensemble: Gaudeamus 2026 Ton de Leeuw
2026 marks the centenary of Ton de Leeuw’s birth. During the Gaudeamus Muziekweek, the New European Ensemble and The Hague Vocal Ensemble, conducted by Angeliki Ploka, present a program centered around De Leeuw’s conception of music as a ritual act.
Midare, written for the Japanese marimba player Michiko Takahashi, is a virtuoso exploration of the instrument. The title (‘free’, ‘unorthodox’) refers to the open structure of the work, in which divergent playing techniques converge and the boundaries of what is executable are pushed to their limits.
In Invocations, the relationship between text, sound, and meaning takes center stage. The Latin texts are primarily drawn from the Psalms and the Missa pro defunctis, structuring the work from the De profundis clamavi ad te, via the Libera me, Domine, to later invocations such as Miserere mei. An instrumental interlude forms a turning point, after which the Gregorian melody is introduced and further developed, featuring a prominent role for both the choir and the solo voice. The work culminates in a concluding Amen.
Invocations is conceived as the third part of a trilogy, alongside Car nos vignes sont en fleur and And they shall reign for ever (both 1981). The three works are linked by their biblical texts and by a shared musical approach, which De Leeuw himself described as ‘extended modality’: a cyclically structured sound field, partly inspired by non-Western traditions such as raga, maqaam, and patet. In this music, sound does not appear merely as form, but as the bearer of a deeper, cohesive whole.
Ear to the Earth: Spotlight Festival - Energiekas
‘Stroom’ is een interactieve performance waarin luisterstations met hydrofoons en onderwateropnames worden gecombineerd met live muziek, uitgevoerd door Ear to the Earth. Deze voorstelling biedt een voorproefje van hun aankomende project ‘Stroomopwaarts’, dat zich richt op onderwater geluidsvervuiling. Ear to the Earth wil nieuwsgierig maken, en zich met jou verwonderen over onze eigen leefomgeving. Ze geloven dat zorgen voor onze omgeving begint bij deze verwondering.
BWA Session
Kom je spelen? Op donderdagavond 2 april ben je uitgenodigd in onze Haagse huiskamer voor muziek, experiment en gezelligheid! Welkom bij onze But What About Sessions.
Zin om muziek te maken met ons en de rest? Kom langs!
Zin om te luisteren? Kom langs!
Zin om (muzikale) dingen uit te proberen? Kom langs!
Geen idee waar je zin in hebt? Kom langs!
In de kelder van The Grey Space in the Middle (hartje Den Haag) is letterlijk alle ruimte voor jou, je vrienden, je ideeën en uitprobeersels. Zonder podium, mét bar. We zien elkaar op gelijke hoogte.
Ear to the Earth presents a portion of their newest children’s performance “Weerwerk”. Weerwerkers are the magicians behind the weather. But what if they decide to go on vacation? A Dutch weerwerker decides to take a holiday after a week long rainy season - to the desert! What she discovers there makes her realize just how important she really is, and the rain too!
Embassy of the Peat: Workshop
What if the peatlands could speak? What might they tell us? In collaboration with Utrecht University, Ear to the Earth and Embassy of The Peat host an afternoon in the Utrecht peatlands. Participants listen, perform with, and explore the peatlands through music, sound recording, and philosophy.
Just Press Play
Ensemble But What About speelt een interactieve voorstelling voor iedereen van 4 tot 114 jaar oud.
Just Press Play
Ensemble But What About speelt een interactieve voorstelling voor iedereen van 4 tot 114 jaar oud.
Fields
(2026) fields is an ensemble work that explores the layers and habitats of our subterranean surroundings. The work moves between micro and macro views, below and above the surface, focusing on soil, materials, and organisms, and the states they are in. fields takes place in a landscape we do not often visit, right under our feet.