The composition department of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam proudly presents the 10th edition of the Composers' Festival. The Composers' Festival Amsterdam is a platform for the graduating composition students of the CvA to present their best works, most of them being world premieres. The amazing diversity of the concerts offers a great palette of chamber music in various genres: chamber, electronic and organ music, interdisciplinary performances and a campfire piece. Join us!

The 2022 edition of the Composers' Festival takes place on 12, 13 and 14 May 2022.
Locations: Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Oosterdokskade 151 & Het Orgelpark, Gerard Brandtstraat 26, Amsterdam

» Download the programme​​​​ (PDF)

Duration: 10'
Location: 5.01 & 5.03

Walzer is a virtual reality experience with several stories circling women's rights and the first wave of feminism during the late 19th and early 20th century. 
As you travel through a virtual photographic landscape, a waltz is your guide. When you move around, the waltz morphs into a variety of moods in eight different languages accompanied by songs and poems.
This vr was built with thousands of unknown personal photographs found on flea markets, online marketplaces and private collections. During the process of collecting and digital restoration, intriguing stories emerged. Narratives developed when we connected pictures with other pictures and combined them with music, words, sounds and 3D technology. Inside this virtual world the user's knowledge, background and behaviour determines the experience.

Duration: 45'
Location: Theaterzaal

Heavens is an invitation to look above in the midst of mundanity. I myself would not be able to do so (neither in this composition nor in general)  without the help of  my collaborators and dearest friends George Demetriou, Dimitri Geelhoed and Lisa Weyrauther - all who I love very much. 

Duration: 45'-60'
Location: Ensemblezaal

NOISE ORGAN is a compendium of sounds developed for different projects that Arieh Chrem has been involved in in the last couple of years, from generative machines to drone compositions made specifically for all-subwoofer systems, they are collected into a continuous set performed in collaboration with clarinet player, composer and improviser Michele Mazzini.

Duration: 75'
Location: Ensemblezaal

WHERE BIRDS GO TO DIE is one of Philip's many aliases that focuses on nihilistic noise music. WBGTD is negative, gloomy and hopeless so the rest of his output does not have to be. Sound is used as a weapon, saturated, sometimes painful and dissonant, sometimes in tune and pompous. The set combines tracks recorded over the span of the last few years, repurposed collaborative improvisations as well as an unpredictable layer improvised live. 

Duration: 40'
Location: Amsterdam Blue Note

diepvriesfruit is a song-collection inspired by pop, jazz, hiphop and ancient polyphony. The song texts, poems, result from explosive overwhelming everyday emotions.   

Duration: 5'
Location: Amsterdam Blue Note

"Sehnsucht nach wem, den ich nicht kenn'" ("Longing for someone I do not know") is a solopiece for recorder with interludes of spoken words. Every movement is an emotional continuation of the preceded poems which deal with the ambiguety of longing and loving, of unfullfilled wishes and gratitude.             

Duration: 8'
Location: Orgelpark

Tonight is the night when two become one! We join samples from 25 different sources together with new parts for the band. Hyperorgan will be a welcome addition tonight. It functions amazingly well in our psychological group dynamic. These songs reflect on a relation between two of anything, that are meant to be together. The lyrics go something like: "Sometimes. It causes me. To Tremble. Were you there?" and then there's a bunch of lines about sleeping.

Duration: 22'
Location: Orgelpark

Iconostasis is a state between two spaces. It is where the audience waits, ready to follow the harmonium player wherever she is being led to. The music comes from my sketchbook from 4 years ago.

Duration: 12'
Location: Orgelpark

‘Sprünge der Zeit’ (~ Leaps of Time) is a three-part music theatre performance based on the theme of jumps (of historical, of physical and of the temporal kind) for dancer, projectionist and organ, involving a trampoline, bouncing ball, rabbit, slide projector, celeste, and various objects that reflect inventions of history.

Duration: 4'
Location: Orgelpark

for Si is a piece for double bass and organ involving the organ 'comping' chords in the background, while the double bassist delivers a furious solo of vigor that quickly and briefly shows all of the capabilities of the instrument and its player.

Duration: 4'
Location: Orgelpark

In the two years prior to writing Che nulla stringo, e tutto il mondo abbraccio, I developed a passion for the music of the early Italian renaissance. Mainly composers like Willaert, Josquin and Gabrieli sparked my interest. Starting in a time in which there was very little polyphonic music, it seems like these composers worked together, each adding their small contribution building a great repertoire. I like to think of it like a collective masterpiece, and the quality is very apparent: listening to the music of these composers, so simple yet perfectly executed, gives me a great feeling of comfort and ease. What I )nd fascinating is that while these composers wrote such sweet and heavenly music, the living conditions were actually quite poor. I think the music doesn't re-ect the life at the time very well, but I can also imagine that people would crave this music: maybe it would lift them from their lives into a beautiful place for a brief moment? In modern life, I feel that this music can still bring us a similar effect. That is why, in this piece, I want to add my small contribution to this repertoire, continuing on the work of the early renaissance composers with some help of two of my biggest musical in-uences from France. I hope Che nulla stringo, e tutto il mondo abbraccio can bring some relief and comfort, like a warm hug. At least for me it did when I was lost and needed it: holding on to nothing (but the music), and embracing the whole world, derived from a part of a madrigal text by Orazio Vecchi: Io volo sopra il cielo, e in terra giaccio E in tal pensiero Io mi disperso Che nulla stringo, e tutto il mondo abbraccio.            

Duration: 10'
Location: 5.08 & 5.10

Walzer is a virtual reality experience with several stories circling women's rights and the first wave of feminism during the late 19th and early 20th century. 
As you travel through a virtual photographic landscape, a waltz is your guide. When you move around, the waltz morphs into a variety of moods in eight different languages accompanied by songs and poems.
This vr was built with thousands of unknown personal photographs found on flea markets, online marketplaces and private collections. During the process of collecting and digital restoration, intriguing stories emerged. Narratives developed when we connected pictures with other pictures and combined them with music, words, sounds and 3D technology. Inside this virtual world the user's knowledge, background and behaviour determines the experience.

Score Collective playing:

Melle Heij Ruminations
Duration: 15'
After suffering an untimely demise at the hands of you-know-what in 2020, my graduation piece Ruminations (2020) is now back for the 2022 edition of the Composers Festival. It is a solemn exploration of a dream world brimming with crystalline mountains of celestial color, desolate moors echoing with fading memories, and the menacing pulsations of obscured machinery.

Apollonio Maiello solastalgia
Duration: 7'
solastalgia is a piece about the extreme emtional distress due to an enviromental change. In this case, the enviromental status is translated to a simple harmonic progression. Drenched with melancholy and the feeling of loss, this piece is an auditive rendering of the negative feelings associated with change of a seemingly safe condition.

Philip Przybyło Meduza for amplified string trio and electronics
Duration: 20'
Meduza is an aggressive string trio which exploits the metallic and physical aspects of strings. In combination with the electronics, the piece opens with a raw explosion of energy birthed from varying bow speed and pressure and closes with faint echoes of a love song by the French- Baroque composer Michel Lambert. Meduza is the second in a series of pieces written about squishy and floppy creatures, the first one being Ameba from 2019.

Duration: 50'
Location: Theaterzaal

The idea that the difference between things is where all expression is born is one that has obsessed the composer for years at this point. This idea permeates every part of the musical process, from composition to improvisation to reading a score. ‘Contrast is a thing that we can see’ is an essay and an exercise in building a narrative out of comparing things to what stands next to them, comparing them to themselves as they were in the past, and even comparing them to what remains in our memories. The piece was developed together with some of my most esteemed friends and wonderful improvisers, who over a period of months engaged in texts and music that I brought to them. This process is documented on video and included within the performance, creating dynamic reference frames from which to understand the act of interpretation, remembering and the thing that we call composing.