Goede Maten celebrates the birthdays and lasting legacy of Misha Mengelberg (5 June 1935 – 3 March 2017) and Louis Andriessen (6 June 1939 – 1 July 2021). Both close friends, composers and improvisers, they not only shook up Dutch music but left their mark across the world.

Tonight, Goede Maten shows that great artists do not only live on through their finished work: they remain forces that keep generating new encounters, through archival discoveries, musical friendships, rediscoveries and new generations of performers. A colourful gathering pays tribute to them, featuring the mighty ICP Orchestra, Cristina Zavalloni, Gerard Bouwhuis, Heleen Hulst and De Kickers, directed by Jan Maarten Koeman.

Beforehand, students of HKU Utrecht Conservatoire perform a preview of De Schat van Scharlaken Rackham, a piece Louis Andriessen wrote in 1970 for the Utrecht Music School. In the Atrium, starts at 19:45.

This concert is part of Misha Kosmos Festival (May 25 – June 7). The festival honors and celebrates the wacky and wonderful musical world of composer, pianist and philosopher Misha Mengelberg (1935 – 2017). Misha Kosmos takes place at various locations in Amsterdam, including De Roode Bioscoop, Studio K, Takland, De Richel, OCCII, Splendor, Zaal 100, De Kring and BIMHUIS.

The programma is partly improvised, especially the Misha pieces, with many surprises. But here are a few highlight-elements. 

Rediscovered (many never before performed) works:

– Misha Mengelberg a number of scores he wrote when he was very young, plus many other discoveries! The ICP likes to surprise the audience.

– recently discovered: Fanfare, written by Louis for Misha 

– a special arrangement of songs from Theatre of the World (2015) with Cristina Zavalloni,

– Una passeggiata in tram in America e ritorno (2000) with film by Marijke van Warmerdam,

– American Traveling (1968)

AMERICAN TRAVELLING (De Kickers) – the story –

Low score, lost score, and a choir that endured

Louis Andriessen’s American Travelling (1968) was originally composed as a required piece for a choir festival in Arnhem, but was rejected due to its explicitly anti-American lyrics, written during the Vietnam War. Instead, it received its world premiere decades later  in 2010 in a small Dutch village, sung by De Kickers, Louis’ trusted children’s choir.

Soon after, they brought American Travelling to an international choir competition in Barcelona, where they received a score of just one point. Whether the jury rejected the political text or the choir was simply too exhausted to sing well is unclear: they’d arrived from the Netherlands by bus, reached their host families at 2 a.m., were treated to a full Spanish dinner, and had to perform at 10 the next morning after minimal sleep.

The piece vanished from view for decades, and the score itself was lost. But De Kickers continued on, and many of its former members have become involved in music professionally. They still maintain a WhatsApp group and a strong sense of connection. The idea of revisiting American Travelling—now, as adults—is not just musical. It’s about healing a strange and formative experience, reclaiming a censored work, and shining new light on their work with Andriessen. All thanks in no small part to former Andriessen student Anke Brouwer’s efforts to reconnect with the conductor and the original singers and piece the history back together.

As one of them put it: “It’s astonishing how quickly the music came back. After 20 years, it was just there again.” Some are now choir conductors themselves. They remember singing difficult texts and complex music as children, and want to bring that spirit back – in this case not just as performers, but as the impetus for more kids to sing new music.

De Kickers also sang in Louis Andriessen’s La Commedia (2007), Trilogie voor de laatste dag (1997), and Writing to Vermeer (1999).

BBC Magazine:

“In the epilogue to La Commedia, a children’s chorus [red: De Kickers] interrupts the blissful reverie of Dante’s text with a puckish warning in earthy Dutch. ‘These are all our notes for you,’ they sing; ‘if you don’t understand them, the Last Judgement won’t make sense either.’ The sense of right and wrong that courses through Andriessen’s music is grounded in Marxist politics, not Christian theology, but he was, above all else, a composer of conviction.” – Tom Stewart,  1 June 2023