People who say Student Life is the best, are telling nothing but the truth. Although I graduated from my Masters program almost one year ago, I seem to be having trouble leaving anything student-related behind. In February this year, I performed at Stukafest, a festival that turns student rooms around Holland into musical and theatrical stages. And now, I have performed at my second student festival, namely Amsterdams Studenten Festival.

Composer and Cultural Analysis Masters student from the UvA Luke Shirock happened to be at my Stukafest performance (as he himself performed in the one in Groningen) and contacted me afterwards to see if I would be interested in performing in a ensemble that would accompanying his films in a live setting. Sounded like a great concept, almost like playing live to a silent film. Anyway, when I watched the films and listened to the scores, I was really blown away by the honesty and deep emotion of it all. One was called Airplane and the other called Droomschap. 

Photos from http://lukeshirock.com/asf/

The White Fox Ensemble features: 

Luke Shirock - piano, guitar, percussion
Julien Staartjes - electric guitar
Dolan Jones - violin and trumpet
Sofia Fonseca - viola
Janice Wong - cello
Lukas Verburgt - drums

The festival itself was held at the new CREA building in the East of Amsterdam, with all kinds of performances simultaneously. It was strange that we were in the music hall and not in the theatre. But at least the audience was very still and was captivated by our performance.

I guess it was a success because we have just heard the good news from the jury that our performance won first prize in the Beeldende (visual arts) section. A big congratulations to Luke and the rest of the ensemble! We will get the opportunity to perform the works again around Amsterdam. Quite cool!