DCV 312 – Gerard Beljon: Lament

General Gerard Beljon was born on April 16, in 1952 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Education Beljon studied lute and guitar at the conservatories of Utrecht and The Hague with Hans Verzijl and Toyohiko Satoh, respectively. He also studied composition with Carlos Michàns and Daan Manneke.

In collaboration with composers and musicians, chamber choir JIP is performing a program that consists entirely of new music, written especially for JIP. It will perform this at, among other things, the Day of the Composer and the Gaudeamus Music Week.

You may have been there when it premiered in 2022, Me miseram quid agam/Min al acmaaq; a work by Gerard Beljon, inspired by the 12th century Easter play from the Basilica of Our Lady, for Western and Arabic soprano and choir.

Celia Swart (1994, NL) is a new music composer, saxophone player and visual artist. Growing up playing saxophone and piano, she found her love for composing.

Education Michael has a degree in English Literature from the State University of New York. Despite having no formal music education, he has an active international career in several aspects of the music business.

"Creativity is an unconscious act of insanity, in a burst of which the truth is born. No matter how beautiful or disgusting it may seem to people far from madness, its value is beyond doubt, both for the author and for those able to sense its invisible beauty. After all, gratitude for endless trials and suffering brings joy and blissful emptiness… Being shocked by music is about pain turning into beauty and getting under your skin, taking away your breath; about everything stopping to move. I want to be scratched inside by sound and experience the fleeting, invisible beauty." - Maxim Shalygin