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Luchtkasteel
April 2006 Saturday, 22th of April, The second edition of Luchtkastelen (castles made out of air) opened in the Nicolaichurch, in the Dutch town of Utrecht. Beginning a quarter to two in the afternoon, guests and musicians where treated to 3 hours of unconventional organ music. The magnificent instrument was being supplemented by a wide area of artists and instruments such as marimba's, a full acoustics percussion set, theremin, trumpet and electronics. A few weeks earlier I was approached to re-mix Herzlich tut mich verlangen by Johann Sebastian Bach. After some thinking about having to change a work of someone else, I decided to take a more "free" approach to the term re-mix. Choosing to leave the original recording intact and instead re-mix the environment in which it was played. The idea thus was to do something with the church itself by making an ambience that would take the "ceiling" off. It would have to take listeners on an imaginary trip outside, using environmental sounds, tones and chords that are sympathetic to the Bach recording. At the end J.S. Bach's music would play and take bring us back into the building. |
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Unfortunately, on Saturday the 22nd of April in 2006, this idea turned out to be overly ambitious, and came out a bit pretentious even. The festival played our four re-mixes (three more artistst where asked) during the break between "real" performances. This must have been the reason for asking "ambient" artists in this first place, but it was never communicated as such.
People understandably got up to get coffee as instruments for the next performance where being set up on the stage. My idea of taking people outside and bringing them back inside, could not compete with all the background noise and turned out to be a fine "Luchtkaseel" indeed. Even though the project failed it was an interesting experience and with a video made during the rehearsal I was able to re-create the idea. The actual J.S. Bach recording (which would have started at the end) had to be left out for copyright reasons. If you choose to watch it in full screen you will have to right-click on the video, then choose stop to return to your web browser. |
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