Fani Konstantinidou (GR)
Electronic music composer & performer
Fani Konstantinidou is an Amsterdam-based composer and performer. She composes electronic music in self-designed digital musical environments, incorporating a broad spectrum of sound sources inspired by the sonic imprints of cultural, cross-cultural, and social identities.
She composes electronic music incorporating a broad spectrum of sound sources inspired by the sonic imprints of cultural, cross-cultural, and social identities, with her self-designed digital musical environments. Her musical ideas take shape in various formats, including site-specific and multichannel works, improvisation, and compositions for conventional instruments and electronics. Within this context, she performs live electronics, both solo and with other instrumentalists and ensembles. Her performances are characterized by improvisational segments and musical dialogues among complex sonic textures that shift between noise, minimalistic drones, and arbitrary rhythmic patterns. Her latest album, Undertones (2025), for percussion and electronics, is available on Moving Furniture Records.
Axel Dörner (DE)
Trumpet, electronics, composition;
Born in Cologne, Germany, in 1964. At the age of nine he started playing piano, at the age of eleven playing trumpet in a local music school, then he studied piano and trumpet (with Malte Burba) at the Musikhochschule, Cologne. Lives in Berlin since 1994. He has worked together with numerous internationally respected figures in the fields of "Improvised Music", "Jazz", "Composed Contemporary Music" and "Electronic Music". He has developed a unique style of trumpet playing based in part on unusual, often self-invented techniques. Since 2000 he is working on an electronic extension of his music on the trumpet (together with Sukandar Kartadinata). Most of the ensembles he is part of are characterized by a non-hierarchical collaboration of the musicians involved. He has toured in Europe, America, Australia, Asia and Africa and appeared on numerous CD and record releases.
Heleen Hulst
Violinist Heleen Hulst studied with Vera Beths at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. It was there that she first encountered contemporary music, which became a great passion. She has been a member of ensembles including the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble and Remix Porto, and Martijn Padding wrote the violin concerto 'White Eagle' for her.
She also developed a love for playing classical music on period instruments, which she pursued with the Van Swieten Society.
Her wide-ranging interests have led to collaborations with Dansgroep Krisztina de Châtel, ZT Hollandia and choreographer Paul Selwyn Norton, among others.
With pianist Gerard Bouwhuis she forms a duo devoted mainly to 20th-century repertoire. Several Dutch composers have dedicated works to them, including Paul Termos, Peter Adriaansz and Guus Janssen. In 2005 the two co-founded Nieuw Amsterdams Peil, and Heleen has been a member of the Splendor collective since its founding.
İpek Odabaşı (TUR)
İpek Odabaşı is an Istanbul-born, Berlin-based electronic musician, noise artist, experimental DJ, and curator working across experimental music, noise, and improvisation. Her performances bring together samples and field recordings with live sound generated through hardware instruments, no-input mixing board, and modular digital environments for real-time synthesis, signal processing, and transformation. Alongside her artistic practice, Odabaşı is a co-founder of Richten25, an artist-run project space for experimental music and art in Berlin. She is also co-curator of the Neu Berlin Institute of Improvised Music series and coordinator of the A.I.D concert series, contributing to Berlin’s independent experimental and improvised music scene through performance, curation, and collective organization over the years.
Raoul van der Weide (NL)
Double bass, crackle box, objects
Raoul van der Weide studied classical violin from 1958 to 1966 and switched to double bass, self-taught, in 1967. Alongside studying Sociology at the University of Amsterdam (1982), he became a passionate free improviser, educator and programmer, based in Amsterdam. Since 1979 the crackle box (kraakdoos) has been part of his practice; he is also an analogue collagist. Classical music, jazz, Latin, world music, experimental sound, visual art, poetry and design all feed his work.
He has played with Steve Lacy, Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg, Tristan Honsinger, Marshall Allen, Ernst Reijseger, Michael Moore and many others. He leads the Blue Lines trio and the Xavier Pamplona Septet, and recorded the solo CD 'Passages' (2005), dedicated to Paul Termos. With José Lencastre and Onno Govaert he released 'Cinematico' (2023).
Since 2009 he has strengthened Amsterdam's improvisation infrastructure by founding and programming long-running series such as OORSPRONG, Pintotonics n+1 (Huis De Pinto), All Strings Night (De Tanker) and Improbellissimo.
Hans Dagelet (NL)
Hans Dagelet is a highly respected and prolific Dutch actor whose career spans over five decades. After studying at the Arnhem Drama School, he quickly made his mark in theater, earning the prestigious Louis d'Or award in 1971 for his role in Kees de jongen.
A versatile performer, Dagelet has starred in numerous iconic Dutch films, such as the cult thriller De Lift (1983) and the critically acclaimed international award-winner Sweet Dreams (2023). On television, he is widely recognized for his recurring roles in popular series like Mocro Maffia, De Eetclub, Flikken Rotterdam, Russen, Vuurzee, Familie Kruys, and Sleepers.
Beyond acting, Dagelet is an accomplished musician who plays trumpet for the well-known Dutch band Spinvis. His artistic legacy continues through his family, as all five of his children—including actresses Charlie Chan and Tatum Dagelet—have successfully followed his footsteps into the acting profession.
Danya Pilchen
Danya Pilchen is a composer, musician, and sound artist based in The Hague. He has composed for a wide range of settings, including solo, ensemble, and orchestra, as well as theatre productions. A significant part of his practice involves creating immersive sound installations that incorporate instrumental performances.
Pilchen’s practice focuses on the human experience of time and on sound’s ability to communicate it. His music is closely intertwined with his research into collective experiences of time in musical practices. Understanding time as an emerging property of consciousness affected by social interactions necessitates increased attention to the relationships between musicians and audiences in Pilchen’s pieces. To facilitate these interactions, he employs various compositional strategies and listening techniques that engage with the materiality of sound.
A particular area of interest lies at the intersection between the aural perception of space and time, which Pilchen explores in a series of works that utilise acoustic feedback, spatialisation, memory, and listener participation in various formats.
Germaine Sijstermans
Germaine Sijstermans is a composer, installation artist, and clarinetist. Her site-specifc installations and compositions leave room for the beauty of chance, and the richness of sensory perception, both for performers and for visitors. Through sound, silence, light, space, and embodiment, she creates (sound) environments in which each person present can follow their own unique path of experience.
Distilled to their essence, each composition and installation is an interplay of lines, textures, in-between spaces, surfaces, colour, light, and gravity. The compositions' open scores invite interaction between sounds, melodies, performers, and their surroundings. Abstract sonic materials unfold in organic ways, with a central role for timbre and sound textures, occurring in a non-linear experience and perception of time. Sijstermans's installations are temporary, transparent environments. Through the careful placement of simple materials, they coexist with a space without concealing anything.
In her clarinet performances Sijstermans attentively combines clear clarinet sounds with timbres and gestures at the limits of emergence and decay.
Lida Brouskari (GR)
Lida Brouskari (Athens, 1995) is an improviser, composer and vocalist whose work moves between synths, piano, extended piano techniques, voice and text. Trained in classical piano at Odeio Ilion (1st Award) and in jazz piano at HKU, she brings together improvisation, composition and conceptual performance in a sound that is quirky, mysterious and full of playful synth textures. Her concerts become spaces to enter a particular sonic world, shifting between intimate songwriting, abstract sound exploration and conceptual approaches to the concert form.
She has performed at Le Guess Who, Rewire, Bimhuis, Tivoli, Jazz is Dead (IT) and Druga Godba (SI), is active in ensembles including Nufaro, MARUSKES, tatatacouF, Vythos and doppler, and plays with Mestizx, Archimboldi Ensemble and Awichas. With MARUSKES she composed music for visual artist Marguerite Humeau's exhibition Torches (Arken Museum, HAM Helsinki) and film sk/ey, shown at ICA Miami. She is also active as a curator, founding the Nu!Presents collective and organising the nine-part YuijiuY concert series.
Lukas Simonis (NL)
Lukas Simonis (1961) is one of the founders of WORM, Rotterdam. He organises and produces radio, concerts, cd's, performing projects and writing, sometimes as KLANGENDUM, a foundation that promotes soundart and radio-art, sometimes under the WORM-umbrella, sometimes in cooperation with others (oa. The Radia Network, Poetry International, Soundtrackcity, WGW, Vrooom, etc.) He started out as a 'unconventional' rock musician, playing in bands like Trespassers W and Dull Schicksal. In later years he turned more andWGW more to electronic, improvised music and sound art, allthough he still has a weak spot for his version of rock, and he is playing with people like Nina Hitz, Ergo Phizmiz, Pierre Bastien, GW Sok, Henk Bakker, Jim Whelton, Lucinda Guy, GJ Prins, Ege Sahin and the Bohman Brothers. Other groups and projects include Coolhaven (electro performance trash), Stepmother, Vril (songs), Static Tics (electronics) and Kruk (improv perfo).
Since the year 2000 Simonis got more involved in Soundart and Radio making, in different constellations, cooperating with Artists, Journalists and radiomakers. Other activities; curating anything that can be curated (music mostly), filmmusic, writing (ao. plays & radioplays).
Nina Hitz (CH)
Nina Hitz is a Swiss born cellist. Her musical background includes baroque, contemporary, and experimental music. Her work combines performance, improvisation, collaboration, and sound exploration across disciplines. She has performed with the Swiss avant-garde ensemble daswirdas, Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, The Barton Workshop, uiuiui koo, and Hydra Ensemble. She currently plays with Modelo62 and also works as a music therapist.
Alongside her performance practice, Nina develops projects that bring musicians and artists together to compose, experiment, and exchange ideas. She is currently immersed in a project inspired by the short stories of Leonora Carrington, exploring different collaborations and seeking new forms through which to bring the work to life.
Nina Hitz is a cellist who still enjoys the analogue touch of a wooden box. In another life, she might become an electronic sound artist, a painter, an actor, or a singer. She is not particularly accomplished in any of these fields — at least, not yet. Perhaps that is precisely the point.
Dr. Peter van Bergen (NL)
Dr. Peter van Bergen is an influential Dutch musician, composer, and artistic researcher at the forefront of contemporary electro-acoustic music. As a masterful multi-instrumentalist, he performs on various saxophones and clarinets, focusing heavily on extended performance techniques.
Van Bergen studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague before receiving an international scholarship to train under the renowned British saxophonist Evan Parker. In 1982, he founded LOOS, a pioneering multidisciplinary ensemble and foundation that blends music with live electronics, interactive computers, and theater.
His career is defined by high-profile partnerships with pioneering figures of the global avant-garde, bridging the worlds of free jazz, Dutch minimalist composition, and international improv
Throughout his career, he has collaborated with global avant-garde icons like Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Derek Bailey, George E Lewis, Butch Morris. He was awarded the prestigious Dutch Podium Prize for jazz and improvised music in 1987. A dedicated educator and academic, he holds a PhD focusing on improvisation, interactivity, and instability in modern sound art.
Gerard Bouwhuis (NL)
The pianist Gerard Bouwhuis was a member of Hoketus, the Ebony Band, the Xenakis Ensemble and LOOS. In 1978 he founded the Pianoduo with Cees van Zeeland, with whom he recorded several CDs. Many composers have written works for him, including Louis Andriessen, Cornelis de Bondt, Martijn Padding and Rob Zuidam. As a soloist he has toured North and South America, Canada, Australia and Japan. Since 1998 he has played in a duo with the violinist Heleen Hulst, and in 2005 the two of them founded Nieuw Amsterdams Peil, an ensemble specialising in 20th- and 21st-century chamber music. The composer Boudewijn Tarenskeen wrote a special Winterreise for Bouwhuis and Wende, with which they toured in 2016. In 2003 he received the Theo Bruins Prize for his exceptional commitment to contemporary Dutch music. He is currently performing the show Maar wat er ook gebeurt er klinkt muziek (“But whatever happens, there is music”) with Olga Zuiderhoek. Bouwhuis is a member of the musicians’ collective Splendor.
Heleen Hulst
Violinist Heleen Hulst studied with Vera Beths at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. It was there that she first encountered contemporary music, which became a great passion. She has been a member of ensembles including the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble and Remix Porto, and Martijn Padding wrote the violin concerto 'White Eagle' for her.
She also developed a love for playing classical music on period instruments, which she pursued with the Van Swieten Society.
Her wide-ranging interests have led to collaborations with Dansgroep Krisztina de Châtel, ZT Hollandia and choreographer Paul Selwyn Norton, among others.
With pianist Gerard Bouwhuis she forms a duo devoted mainly to 20th-century repertoire. Several Dutch composers have dedicated works to them, including Paul Termos, Peter Adriaansz and Guus Janssen. In 2005 the two co-founded Nieuw Amsterdams Peil, and Heleen has been a member of the Splendor collective since its founding.
Gert-Jan Prins (NL)
Gert-Jan Prins is a sound artist. He began his career as a drummer. Today his work includes performances, sound installations, compositions, electronic circuits and collaborations with composers, musicians, visual artists and dancers.
Prins explores the sonic and musical qualities of noise, electronic noise and other sound elements. He works with self-built electronics and percussion, media he also uses as visual installations. Throughout, he investigates the relationship between sound and image.
He has worked with, among others, Cor Fuhler, Peter van Bergen, Bas van Koolwijk, Anne la Berge, Misha Mengelberg, Fred van Hove, Johannes Bauer, Luc Houtkamp, Mats Gustafsson, Raed Yassin, Dirar Kalash, Billy Roisz, GW Sok, Lukas Simonis, Toshi Nakamura, Bryan Eubanks, Tetuzi Akiyama, Koen Nutters, Germaine Sijstermans, Marielle Groven, Seamus Cater, Jeroen Kimman, MIMEO (Music in Movement Electronic Orchestra) and Gorgonzola Legs.
Paul Koek (NL)
Paul Koek (1954) studied percussion at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. He was involved in founding ensembles such as Louis Andriessen’s Hoketus and Peter van Bergen’s LOOS, and, since 2023, NAP.
He has also collaborated with artists and composers including Dick Raaijmakers, Heiner Goebbels and Bob Wilson. In 1984 he co-founded Theatergroep Hollandia with Johan Simons, where he developed the Veenstudio as a workshop for music theatre.
In 2003 Koek founded De Veenfabriek, a dynamic music theatre ensemble in which music, theatre and other art disciplines come together. He initiated musical projects such as the Sirene Orkest, the improvisation ensemble TRACK and the musique concrète ensemble SingSong. As a director and maker, he has created numerous music theatre productions, including collaborations with Asko|Schönberg, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Schauspielhaus Bochum and many others. His work is characterised by musical experimentation, interdisciplinary research and performances in unusual locations. Koek also taught for many years at the Royal Conservatoire and has been involved in developing new generations of music theatre makers.
Koen Kaptijn (NL)
Koen Kaptijn is a highly acclaimed trombonist, composer and performer and operates at the forefront of contemporary music performance scene in the Netherlands for the last 25 years. He was actively involved in premieres of more than 600 pieces. Koen is a member of Asko|Schönberg, 7090, New Trombone Collective, New European Ensemble and Nieuw Amsterdams Peil.
In the past he has been a member of Orchestra De Volharding, Maarten Altena Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Class Ensemble, David Kweksilber Bigband and Splendor Amsterdam and worked as a freelancer with Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, Corrie van Binsbergen, Orkater, Internationaal Toneel Amsterdam, LOD Gent, Theater Transparant Antwerpen and Klangforum Wien. Besides his work as a musician, he also composes pieces for his own ensembles, works as a composer/sound designer for theatre and creates sounders installations.
Olga Zuiderhoek (NL)
Can you make a bio from the Dutch actress Olga Zuiderhoek? Max 160 words
Olga Zuiderhoek (born September 16, 1946) is an acclaimed and versatile Dutch actress known for her extensive contributions to theater, film, and television. After graduating from the Amsterdam Theater School in 1970, she became a prominent member of the innovative, improvisational theater collective Het Werkteater. She later collaborated with leading companies like Orkater and De Mexicaanse Hond.
Zuiderhoek is widely recognized for her captivating screen presence in major Dutch productions. Her notable television credits include the hit crime drama Penoza—which earned her a prestigious TV-Beelden award—and Het Geheime Dagboek van Hendrik Groen. On the big screen, she won a Golden Calf Award for Best Supporting Actress for her poignant role in the wartime drama Süskind (2012).
In addition to acting, she co-authored a low-sodium cookbook inspired by her late partner, jazz musician Willem Breuker. She remains an active and beloved figure in Dutch culture.