Mayke Rademakers STAGIONI

Mayke Rademakers: "The e-cello is a relatively new instrument; it has not yet conquered its true place in the world of classical music. It presents an enormous spectrum of sound colors as well as the possibility of polyphony when played in conjunction with a loop and other effect pedals. It has inspired me significantly as a classical musician and I cannot now imagine undertaking my compositions and improvisations without it. Improvisation directly engages intuition and spontaneity which in turn enlarges perspective.
"Following the improvisations which I combined with the Bach suites and works by contemporary composers, I felt the need to work on a larger piece. This has resulted in ‘STAGIONI’. I could not nor have I wished to ignore Vivaldi and have woven several quotes from his masterpiece into my improvisations. Inspiration has also come from the medieval mystic and first recognized feminine composer, Hildegard von Bingen. Other primal sources which have fed me along the way include early polyphony, Sephardic folk music and Afro-American blues. This was not according to any plan, rather repertoire influences which are recognizable only in hindsight."

Mayke Rademakers / Matthijs Verschoor LA FURIA: PASSION, FURY AND MELANCHOLIA

Mayke Rademakers: All my life, I’ve played a lot of Spanish music, and so has my partner and duo-pianist Matthijs Verschoor. Both of us have worked and studied in Spain. And I spent some time immersing myself in Buenos Aires, because I wanted to see the tango with my own eyes: how people perceived it, how they danced it in the streets and on public squares. At a certain point we got this sense of wanting to do something with it. We had a number of works on our repertoire and so we investigated how we could combine them with new pieces, music we still needed to discover, to produce a great CD. We found the music we were looking for. We put together an exciting combination of Spanish and South American music. In a nutshell: flamenco and tango. 

Spanish music takes folk music as its starting point. La Furia is based on that idea. This music is about the heat, the poverty, about lifestyle and passion. La furia literally means anger or aggression. But in Latin, the word has very positive connotations. It means doing what your instincts tell you, acting with passion, giving it your all. The tango flamenco spread from Spain to South America. The tango is truly South American. Although it does show some flamenco influences, the tango definitely found its own form. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the tango is ‘urban’, because it arose in Buenos Aires. The flamenco is ‘rustic’, because it arose in the countryside.