LOOS artistic researchers 2024
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Leslee Smucker (1986) is a musician utilizing violin, voice, synthesizers, electronics, film, and poetry. Her work focuses on ideas surrounding sound perception, phenomenological spatial relationships, anachronisms, language, and the human/machine relationship. Solo performances include The Scottish Library (presented by University of Edinburgh’s Cantos Project), the Andriessen Festival in Arnhem, NL, Project Audire in Portugal, and Interference Series in Flagstaff. For composition, she was awarded a commission from Gaudeamus for Michela Amici in 2022 for harp and transducers. She has presented her research at the 20th Biennial International Conference on Ninetheeth-Century Music in Huddersfield, UK, and given artistic research lecture-performances at Brancaleoni International Festival and University of Virginia. She is lecturer in music at University of Colorado Boulder. Fellowships include a Barnes Fellow in Philadelphia with artist in residence JACK quartet, as well as a fellow in Ensemble Evolution 2021 with International Contemporary Ensemble.
Artistic Research: They Say It’s New
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Farzaneh is an Iranian musician, researcher, and sound artist based in The Netherlands. Interested in experimental approaches to sound, science, and technology, she explores various disciplines such as electroacoustic music composition, computer science, cybernetics, and linguistics. As tools in her artistic practice, she uses creative coding, field recording, live electronics, as well as acoustic and programmable instruments. Her recent pieces investigate complex systems, natural algorithms, and human-machine interaction. Farzané composes for live performances, interactive installations, films, VR and multi-sensory experiences. The focus of her current research is on artificial intelligence methods in the framework of live electroacoustic music improvisation.
Artistic Research: The Aesthetic Qualities of Machine Behaviours
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Lucie Nezri (FR/NL) is drawn to abstraction and simplicity. her work bridges different contexts and disciplines pertaining to musical composition, tuning theory, computer science, and, at times, choreography. She enjoys exploring probabilistic methods of composition in a diversity of ways, from pieces for computer and classical instrumentation to fixed media, multichannel compositions, and dance performances.
She holds a Bachelor's in music from the Institute of Sonology, where she is finishing her Master's degree.
Since 2021, Nezri has carried out her compositional activities at Studio Loos in collaboration with other instrumentalists and expands her recording/ sound engineering skills during concerts.
Artistic Research: for siblings
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Liza Kuzyakova is a composer, performer, researcher, and curator from Moscow, based in The Netherlands. Grounding her sound practice in between multichannel electro-acoustic composition and live performance, her work relates to sonic deconstruction and histories of sound in the instrumental space, traces and distortions of material. With a passion for extremes of music, she is an active member of the experimental music scene in The Hague, where she curates a series of live performance events - KRAH. Her solo musical project Sáof originates around piercing sonic realms of drone/noise, and she is half of Tselem Enosh, an industrial/power electronics duo.
Liza is a frequent collaborator of Amos Peled and has presented her works in a variety of contexts including contemporary dance, performance art, short films, and exhibitions such as Gaudeamus Festival, Rewire Festival, NDT, iii, Grey Space in the Middle, and Buda BXL.
Artistic Research: Sonic ruins. Contemplations on fragmentation in experimental music.
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Viktoria Nikolova is a singer, performer and creator from Sofia, Bulgaria, currently based in the Netherlands. She obtained a Master’s in classical singing at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in 2017. She specialised in Bulgarian folklore singing as an artistic researcher during that time. She collaborates with various composers and ensembles in the Netherlands and abroad, often crossing between folklore and classical music fields. She is pursuing a degree in cultural sciences at Leiden University, where, she is a co-president of Kunstgang Commission gallery space.
In 2019 at Grachtenfestival, Viktoria’s author performance, “Metamorphosis of a Female Character,” was awarded the Themaprijs and Oorkaanprijs. Between 2018 - 2022 Viktoria took part in the Opera Forward Festival, Westben Online Residency, and Plop Festival, among others. She was part of the internship program NKK NXT 19/20. Since 2020 she has been developing author and collective projects with artists and musicians in multi-disciplinary environments. Her work overlaps topics of, mediation in artistic processes and seeks liminality between digital and physical spaces interwoven with body and vocal improvisation. The main themes of her current artistic research are identity, and transnationalism in the Balkans. more info
Artistic Research: IOM-AIM
Photography by: Marijn Goes
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Johan van Kreij is a sonologist. His practice covers the fields of composing, improvising, making and executing in the field of experimental electro-acoustic music. Both working independently and in cooperation with various artists, he has been involved in a wide variety of projects in the field of improvised music, music theatre, dance, architecture and installation-art. His current collaborations involve the research into quasi-autonomous improvisation systems, the rethinking of generative synthesis models and the development of stepper-motor control approaches. Furthermore, he teaches at the Institute of Sonology and is member of the new LOOS Ensemble.
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The Brazilian interdisciplinary composer Cristiano Melli (1980) studied in São Paulo with Almeida Prado, Osvaldo Lacerda and Jocy de Oliveira. Since 2010 in The Hague, he holds a Bachelor and Master degrees in Composition, having Yannis Kyriakides, Calliope Tsoupaki, Cornelis de Bondt, Gilius van Bergeijk and Peter Adriaansz as teachers. Since 2019 he is part of the Senior Researcher Artistic team of Studio LOOS in The Hague, producing HERTZ, PERSEPHONE ZOOMED, a concert portrait and instalments of the EROLA series. Further projects are the queer multimedia cycles QUEENS and LEENDERT, both in production phase.
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Cornelis de Bondt Composer [from 1975], teacher of music theory at KC [from 1987], research, aesthetics and composition [from 2004]
Composition, research, education and political activism ultimately come together under the heading "The Technique of Beauty". The central question is "Is it possible to formulate criteria for an artistic quality judgment beyond the personal taste judgment?" This question is addressed in all facets of my practice, composition, research, text, education, political action. [Politics ”seen in a broader context: concerning the policy.]
Current project: "The Man of Sorrows", a double opera in which all my work comes together.
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Baidar Al Basri is an Iraqi singer residing in The Netherlands. She comes from a large musical family of are composers, singers, and musicians. She studied Arabic singing, ballet, and theater in Syria. Her studies opera she finished at the Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands. Baidar Al-Basri has received many honors and awards, most notably the title Voice of Religions, which was granted to her by the younger sister of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, princess Margriet. She also won the International Peace Prize in Germany. Baidar has perfomed solo concerts with many international Orchestras of which the most important is the Metropole Orchestra, where she sang four musical works that were specifically composed for her by the Dutch composer Theo Hoek.
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Martin Hurych is a sound artist, architect, and curator living and working in The Hague (NL). Hurych graduated from architecture at ARC FAST BUT (2008–2015) in the Czech Republic, completed his bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Technology in Brno (from 2015–2019), and his Master’s degree at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. He worked as an assistant at Studio Intermedia I, which is located at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (2018–2019), and as an assistant to sculptor Jiří Příhoda (2012–2018). Hurych is a co-founder and art director of the Přespolní association, operating in the countryside of the Czech Republic, where he co-organizes a cultural program (since 2017). He currently works as a research associate at the Institute of Sonology (since 2022) and also as one of the curators of the UFMC online radio platform (since 2022).
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Leah Plave is an American artist, who edges past the traditional role of a cellist, performing not only classical repertoire but jazz, contemporary, experimental, non-western, and early music. Leah has lived and toured extensively across Canada, China, Europe, and the USA as a soloist, chamber musician, and collaborator. Leah was a featured guest speaker for Australia's Curve Magazine Festival, the Berkshire High Peaks Music Festival, and a performer at festivals such as FIMU (Belfort), Thy Chamber Music Festival, The Banff Centre, Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, Garth Newel Music Centre, and Manchester Music Festival.
Her academic studies concluded in The Netherlands, where she earned a Master Degree in baroque cello performance and classical cello at the Royal Conservatoire Den Haag.
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Nirantar Yakthumba is a musician and composer from Nepal, based in the Hague, the Netherlands. He is currently a Master’s student at the Institute of Sonology, with the help of a scholarship awarded to him by the Konrad Boehmer Foundation. In his research, he investigates the relations between sound, materials, force, and geometry, and how people individually and collectively make sense of these relations through practice.
During his Bachelor’s studies in composition at the Royal Conservatoire, the Hague, he studied composition with Peter Adriaansz, Calliope Tsoupaki, Cornelis de Bondt, and Jan van de Putte, as well as contemporary piano with Gerard Bouwhuis. He graduated with distinction in 2023.
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Sean Bell is a countertenor and performance artist from Oslo. He holds a Master’s degree in early music voice from the Royal Conservatoire The Hague (NL), and a Bachelor’s degree in from the Norwegian academy of Music. His work centre mainly on chamber and sacred music and opera, yet also includes a focus on new ideas and methods of interpreting classical and contemporary repertoire. Through sonic imaginations and arrangements, he explores this repertoire in new ways. This has led him to a series of collaborations and solo performances on the border line between classical music and performance art. In 2021 he made his debut at Høstutstillingen (the Norwegian state’s annual exhibition) with his performance work Stille Amare (2021).
Bell also works with contemporary music and has premiered several pieces for countertenor. Bell is an active improviser, plays baroque guitar and engages in instrument building and music electronics.
Artistic Research: Avoiding and affirming definition
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Tilen Lebar (b. 1993) is a Slovenian composer and a saxophonist based in The Hague the Netherlands. He is actively enrolled in the field of chamber music, as well as is premiering new works of young composers. Moreover, Tilen is actively participating in the field of improvised music scene and interdisciplinary arts and regulary cooperates with Zavod Sploh, KUD Mreza, Ensemble Szene Istrumental, CONA | institute for contemporary arts processing, Inexhaustible editions, and also presents his own individual projects with Ensemble Stere, which Tilen founded in 2017. His compositions are showing great knowledge of individual instrumental extended techniques as well as contemplated colors, detailed structures in sound tinctures, all of those expressing in his personal view in introverted musical approach. His collaborations included ensembles as Asamisimasa from Oslo, Experimental studio of SWR Freiburg and ensemble Oerknal among others. During his studies at University in Ljubljana he has been a recipient of a Golden scholarship by Municipality of Murska Sobota (Slovenia), scholarship by University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (Austria), Foundation PIF (Slovenia), Foundation Benko (Slovenia) and is currently a recipient of the scholarship by the Ministry of Culture Republic of Slovenia for his postgraduate studies at Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Since 2019 he is an active member of Society of Slovene Composers (DSS).
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Peter van Bergen is artistic and business director of LOOS. He is a composer, improviser, interpreter and PhD researcher at the Free University of Brussels in the field of interdisciplinary experimental new music. He founded LOOS in 1982 and Studio LOOS in 2005. His research concerns "Improvisation, Interactivity, Instability: Artistic Transformations" (IOMAIM Research) in which improvisation between people is transformed into collaboration between man and machine. As an improviser, he worked with musicians such as Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton. As a composer he wrote for mainly the legendary LOOS Ensemble, various soloists, ASKO Schoenberg, the Volharding. He also worked closely with numerous composers and artists such as Louis Andriessen, Cornelis de Bondt, Huib Emmer, Martijn Padding, Gilius van Bergeijk, Guus Janssen, Paul Koek, Johan Simons, Krisztina de Chatel, Karin Post, Wim T. Schippers, Titus Muizelaar.
Artistic Research: IOM-AIM
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Huib Emmer is a Dutch composer, performer, who played bass guitar in Hoketus, played percussion guitar in Loos, also composed for these groups. He created many pieces for ensembles after his conservatory days in the 1970s. In the 1990s his interest shifted towards electronics, early techno showed that with relatively simple equipment you could really turn the world upside down by giving regularity a new face, which appealed to Huib as an old avantgardist. Since then, he worked on projects combining electronics with acoustic instruments, as well as several projects with electronics and live film/multimedia. Since 2021 an electronic duo with Guus Janssen: the coarse grain.