From October 2015 through March 2017 I created and performed in a series of chamber music concerts at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, with some organizational help from Festival Dag in de Branding. The programming was inspired by exhibitions at the museum, and we tried our best to make all sorts of interesting connections between music and the visual arts. A sculpture exhibition led to our questioning the use of space, and performing John Cage’s infamous 4’33” alongside quartets of Beethoven and Webern. An exhibition on color in painting led us to the music of Messiaen, who was a synaesthete, and to a performance of his Quartet for the End of Time. Perhaps most surprisingly, an exhibition on Piet Mondrian led us to question the basics in the arts, and led to a program an entire concert of Baroque music!

The Gemeentemuseum also happens to house one of the most extensive instrument collections in the world, with instruments from all over the world, but it is currently in storage. This concert series allowed us to display some of the instruments and even perform on a select few, including a harpsichord built in Leiden from the 18th century and percussion instruments built in 12th century China. For the instrument display I was given the lucky task of searching through the Gemeentemuseum’s depot to find all sorts of strange things.

Throughout the concerts I talked to the audience and described certain aspects of the music which related to the artworks they were going to see. And of course we of course played musical examples. I used as my model Leonard Bernstein’s series of Young People’s Concerts, which I still watch every now and then. For me they are true masterpieces of music education – I am sure that I am still learning as much from those concerts now as any 8 year old did in the 1950s.

As word spread, concerts became “standing room only” – for one concert we easily had over 500 attendees. What was most inspiring for me about this series was that our public was an equal mix of music lovers and people who had never come to a classical music concert before in their life. Looking for connections between the visual arts and music helped me broaden my horizons as well, and was a big inspiration to my musical endeavors. Unfortunately, because there are only so many days in a week, we were unable to continue the series further, but I look back fondly on what we accomplished together, and who knows, might find an opportunity to create something similar in the future….