Blog

Here you will find some musical thoughts or thoughtful music from time to time...

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14 July 2025 - Our last piece

Ben Stolk (1957-2023) was a visual artist and a dear, long-time friend of mine. He unexpectedly passed away in October 2023, only 66 years old. Together we formed The Villa since around 2009. Our music was based on improvisation: Ben played his guitar in many ways and added effects, and I used Ableton Live with loops and built-in synths on my laptop. The style could be described as ‘noise’. We had a lot of fun together in making sound sculptures this way. We also had some public performances, mostly connected to an art exhibition.

Here you can hear our last recording session. It seems to be rather calm and structured, like a beautiful landscape somewhere in France or Italy. Or, just look into the sky...

Our last piece (September 2023)

The Villa at the opening of an art exhibition

20 May 2025 - Pink-purple

Peter Sterk and I (Duo Lontano) recorded the attached improvisation on 3 May. We made no prior arrangements, we just started playing whatever came to mind. So very “intuitive.” I named this piece Pink-purple because of the colours it evokes in me. We used contrabass flute and electronic organ here.

We basically play and improvise together every 3 or 4 weeks. Sometimes we start from a simple musical idea. For example, we combine low (contrabass flute) and high notes (electronic organ), or start from a sequence of notes. Sometimes, we even play from a score prepared by one of us.

Pink-purple might become part of our “Organ Project” (see a previous blog). In that case, we will try to name and more or less capture the ideas from this piece. The idea of music based on ideas and improvisation on them is called “comprovisation,” a contraction of composition and improvisation.

At the moment, we are reworking improvisations we did at the Danish Church in Rotterdam. In fact, we are transcribing some parts of them to musical notation, i.e. to a score. That will enable us to perform those improvisations again as comprovisations. The challenge then is to maintain enough spontaneity while playing these pieces. Of course, it's not only the score we play but there is a lot of improvisation involved. The tricky part is making believable transitions between the written and improvised parts.

Pink-purple - contrabass flute and electronic organ

1 April 2025 - Camel

April Fools day! This has to be a joke. And it is, because I posted this blog on May 20, 2025.

Ab Bol and I are Pedal Kings as a duo. Ab plays basses, such as double bass and u-bass. Lately, I have been playing bass flute exclusively in this duo. As the name of our duo suggests, we have a thing for pedals. That's right: Ab used traditional single pedals that are tied together, but I used my laptop with Ableton Live controlled by a Behringer FCB1010 midi pedal. However, I grew to dislike lugging around a laptop and that big midi pedal all the time. So I bought a double Boss looper, a double octave shifter from Electro-Harmonix and a Boss delay unit. This was supplemented by a flanger I got as a gift from a good friend. All this fit exactly on a pedalboard.

We wanted to make some kind of soundscape music, different from our last project “Name dropping”. The project is still ongoing, and we have already finished some tracks, but we don't have any good recordings of them yet. Therefore, below you will find an outline of “Camel”, since all the titles will be cigarette names, although I don't smoke....

Note: this track was recorded with my iPhone and mastered with Logic Pro (you won't believe the result when you hear it).

Camel - bass flute & fx and double bass & fx

9 February 2025 - Breath taking (sketch)

This blog is about the Organ Project that Peter Sterk and I (Duo Lontano) started last year. The idea of the project is to explore unknown sound worlds around the theme of ‘wind’ or ‘wind tales’, often with a major role for silence. The organ will no longer seem the same instrument because of the unorthodox way Peter plays it, for example by opening stops halfway or slowly.

Yesterday, we explored the idea of making breath a central part of playing, as a guiding physical activity that gives playing a stronger character of ‘performance’. For a flute player, the use of breath is of course nothing new. But by letting the musical activity follow entirely from our individual breath, a new way of playing emerges. In doing so, our breathing is obviously not synchronous but follows the ‘natural’ rhythm of each of us. In the piece ‘Breath taking’, we focus not on pitch or beautiful sounds but on wind sounds. Peter plays electronic organ, I play contrabass flute.

In a couple of weeks we will again make recordings in the Danish Seaman's Church in Rotterdam. The sound of the organ will be then be completely different form that on the recording below.

Breath taking (sketch) - contrabass flute and electronic organ

21 January 2025 - First blog

How about some music today? Played by Peter Sterk and me (Duo Lontano) last Saturday, 18 January. Instruments: newly constructed percussion structure by Peter and piccolo by me. In the high pitches we tried to make difference tones. Maybe you hear these.

Piccolo and percussion 2 - piccolo and percussion

Percussion instrument with bells by Peter Sterk.