Nostalgia for the Imperfectness

It must be out of awe for the wonderful nature that man constantly tries to imitate it in artistic expressions and refined technical masterpieces. No matter how carefully those expressions are executed, it remains an approach which often arouses admiration for the manner in which it was made and at the same time is also endearing because of the inability to equal nature.

How beautiful is the future?

This title arose from the contrast between this awe and the way in which man sometimes treats his world mercilessly. The title conveys hope and faith in the future, more than certainty. All this is evoked in a performance in which man's inability to reproduce nature becomes visible and is interpreted as a tribute to life.

Frogs in a Rice Field

Speaker whistles are set up in the plant garden and are controlled so that they imitate the soft calls of frogs.

Baroque bird compositions

During the installation moments, the two pipe organs play baroque music in which the song of birds is imitated or sung.

Contemporary compositions for birds

The organs play bird compositions by Olivier Messiaen. This beautiful but virtuoso music was prepared by the pianist Katrijn Friant so it could be played by the computer-controlled organs during the concert. To compensate for the lack of dynamics, Toon Quanten played an arrangement of Messiaen's Abîme Des Oiseaux on the clarinet simultaneously with two Petites Esquisses d'Oiseaux.

New bird compositions

Dirk Veulemans has made two beautiful arrangements for his organs of real bird song. In it the organs start communicating with each other, as it were, but there is also the voice of a naive bird song algorithm which enters into a dialogue with the real birds.

In Paradisum

Finally there is an acousmatic composition by Dirk Veulemans which concludes the whole and returns to the antique mechanical way of imitating birds.

The botanical garden of Ghent University

It's a stroke of luck if you can have such a project take place in such a beautiful and inspiring environment as this botanical garden. The listeners of the concert also had to pass through a beautiful garden and a tropical greenhouse before they reached the subtropical greenhouse in which the concert was given.

The lighting of such surroundings requires feeling, insight and know-how. Fortunately, I could count on Jan Dekeyser, with whom I had already worked several times in the past. (The Sandman, Medea)

Festival of Flanders - Ghent

"The night of the imagination". A more appropriate theme is hard to imagine. It was therefore a pleasure to be able to realise this production for this well-known festival on 4 October 2019. A few pictures on this page can already give you an idea of the atmosphere.

laatste update: 2021.07.02