Update:
Ear to the Earth Comes to Gaudeamus 2025!
Workshops with De Voorkamer and Gaudeamus
We would like to warmly invite you to our music workshops on the 30th of August, 6th of September and 13th of September!
We will work around the idea of ‘rewilding’: reintroducing wilderness and letting nature take its course in areas constructed or influenced by humans. During three music workshops at De Voorkamer in Utrecht, you can join Ear to the Earth in creating music around this theme. Our work will be presented in a performance titled Verwilderd at the Gaudeamus Festival on the 13th of September at 16:30.
The workshops will explore playing percussion instruments made of trash, recording sounds in the neighborhood, recording or playing our own compositions,... There is always room for your ideas to help guide the direction of the workshops.
Example from previous workshop: CLICK HERE!
Want to sign up? Great! Let us know using the form below, or send us a message on Instagram @eartothearth.ensemble . We can’t wait to hear from you!
Upcoming events
Past Encounters
August 3-11, 2024
Ensemble Modern Young Ensemble Academy 2024
As our debut into performing outside of the Netherlands, Ensemble Modern - world-renowned as one of the premiere contemporary ensembles - invited us along with 5 other ensembles to work closely with them in Frankfurt for three separate concerts. The week included private lessons, masterclasses, workshops, and rehearsing as an ensemble and as a group with all ensembles.
Our program included one new work for us, Walls of Light, by Eric Nathan, along with Festival of Whispers, by Matthew Burtner, Mercury Songbirds, by Keeril Makan, and Blaze, by Dianna Link. Along with these works we included Natural Resources, by Ann Southam in our repertoire. We are beyond grateful to Ensemble Modern and the other ensembles who inspired us and created an amazing experience!
Concert 1 - Internal Concert, Ensemble Modern, Frankfurt
Blaze, by Dianna Link
Walls of Light, by Eric Nathan
Concert 2 - Frankfurt Presbyterian Church, Offenbach
Festival of Whispers, by Matthew Burtner
Concert 3 - Netzwerk Seilerei, Frankfurt
Mercury Songbirds, by Keeril Makan
Natural Resources, by Ann Southam
Walls of Light, by Eric Nathan
August 1, 2024
Delft Chamber Music Festival 2024
In 2023 at the Delft Fringe Festival we were awarded the Delft Chamber Music Prize, which let us perform the following year in the Delft Chamber Music Festival! As this opportunity came to us in an early period, we decided to try something more exciting and unconventional:
Working alongside Trashure Hunt in Scheveningen, we organized multiple sessions to help clean the beach of Scheveningen, and make some music on the pier as people walked by the Trashure Hunt site. What would end up being picked up on the beach made its way into the performance in Delft in Natural Resources, as well as replacing instruments in Dianna Link’s Blaze in the percussion.
Along with this, we created our own composition using field recordings of our hometowns and objects coming from these places. These compositions bookended the concert, with the concert starting in the outdoor garden, transitioning inside into a blend of recorded sound from outside in hidden speakers around the hall. The end of the concert was a precomposed tape piece combining all of the pre-recorded sounds of our hometowns into a collection of ideas. We felt that no matter where you are from, certain sounds are innately familiar, and that no matter how far away we come from, we are still related and can seek to listen carefully wherever we go for these memories and similarities.
Het Voorhuis, Delft
Monologues, Ear to the Earth
Mercury Songbirds, Keeril Makan
Natural Resources, Ann Southam,
Blaze, Dianna Link
Dialogues, Ear to the Earth
June 2-11, 2023
Delft Fringe Festival 2023
Our debut as Ear to the Earth Ensemble, we were invited to perform at the Fringe Festival 2023 with our program centered around coastal erosion and cultural erosion. With a centerpiece of Festival of Whispers, by Matthew Burtner, we created an original concept utilizing Rock Piece, by Pauline Oliveros as well as a group led improvisation to merge the two pieces into a single idea.
Performing in four different venues with 8 concerts, this project was a passion project of our percussionist, Porter Ellerman. By combining multiple performance ideas into a single performance output, our style already began to take shape, and we received many responses of support from those who attended! Furthermore, we received the music prize of the Fringe Festival, meaning we would be performing once more in Delft on the Delft Chamber Music Festival in 2024!
Het Stadshuis, Delft
Lambert van Meeren Museum, Delft
38CC Exposition Room, Delft
Nieuwe Plantage 50, Delft
Rock Piece, by Pauline Oliveros
Festival of Whispers, by Matthew Burtner
April 13-28, 2025
BLOOM IN ITALY
Ear to the Earth was excited to work with composers, dramaturges, and multiple venues in Bergamo, Italy to explore new compositions, creating more original concepts for performances, and enhance an already growing pool of connections for environmentally-guided music making.
Working with six young composers through a Call for Scores, Ear to the Earth workshopped, premiered, and included these six compositions into an original program designed for Spazio Aperto in Osnago, Bloom in Mezzago, as well as Villa Confalonieri in Merate.
Working alongside dramaturge and actor Lilli Valcepina, Ear to the Earth members also worked on stage presence, vocal acting, as well as movement exercises as an extension of music-making.
Concerts:
22nd of April at 20h in Spazio Aperto Osnago
(New date) 27th of April at 15h in Merate, Villa Confalonieri | Tickets here
27th of April at 20h in Mezzago, Bloom