GenZ Voice Recitals: Echoes of Home & Imaginations

Splendor and Stichting VoorUit are happy to present "GenZ Voice Recitals”. This series of four double recitals plus one triple recital offers the audience a fresh look at classical music through the lens of Generation Z. Twelve talented voice students from the Conservatory of Amsterdam and their duo partners take you on a musical journey around the world.

The first stage: Tenor Trevor Brown and jazz pianist Kai Spatzier (USA) perform the music of two legendary, yet very different composers from Trevor's home state of Connecticut: Charles Ives and Dave Brubeck. Soprano Agathe Labadie (France) and pianist Pieter Bogaert (Belgium) will transport even the most mature adult to childhood with music by Offenbach, Poulenc, Kosma, Mendelssohn, and Cole Porter, among others.

Echoes of Home explores the American musical voice through the works of two composers from Connecticut: Charles Ives and Dave Brubeck.
The recital begins with Ives’ rarely performed German-language settings, written when he was still looking to European models of the past generation. A selection of his English songs follow, in which we can see his uniquely American voice begin to emerge. These works deal with themes of nostalgia, memory, and longing for home – qualities that are central to Ives’s musical character.
Then we turn to Dave Brubeck. Brubeck’s songs, with their jazz idiom and lyrical warmth, also evoke memory and reflection, but in a distinctly American language that looks forward rather than back.

Tenor Trevor Brown:
This program is deeply personal to me: it connects directly to my own roots while also tracing the broader story of how American music developed from its European influences into its own voice. I see it as a privilege to take this music and perform it in such a rich cultural city like Amsterdam.
I chose to collaborate with an American jazz pianist for this program. I believe that in our partnership, we can play off of our strengths to bring out both the structural clarity of Ives, as well as the improvisatory spirit of Brubeck. Working together for the entire recital allows us to bring our different backgrounds into dialogue and to shape a program with a shared musical perspective.

A cunning fox, a frustrated jug of water, festive witches and an ambitious oyster: those are among the improbable characters that you will meet in Imaginations. This programme for soprano and piano brings grown-ups back into the realm of childhood, through playfulness, poetry and utter youthful gibberish.

While adulthood is more often than not rooted in reality, logistics and contingencies, human beings undoubtedly need something else to thrive on. In L’imaginaire, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described imagination as the conscious act of establishing an object as fictional, thus settling imagination as an act of creative freedom. Easily forgotten by adults, constantly explored by children, this priceless resource is nonetheless present in each and every one of us, in as many
expressions as there are people. This programme celebrates the power childlike imagination has to refresh our inner worlds and restore hope.

Imaginations is strongly anchored in the music of colourful French composers, namely Jacques Offenbach, Francis Poulenc and Joseph Kosma. The programme also makes a detour through mysterious German Lieder with Hugo Wolf and Felix
Mendelssohn, and ends by a touch of American ingenuity with songs by Leonard Bernstein and Cole Porter. The show is brought to life by Greek stage director Iris Skolidi. The artists offer the audience a moment of spontaneous inventiveness and vivid joy, that they are invited to spread around!

Trevor Brown - tenor
Kai Spatzier - piano
Agathe Labadie - soprano
Pieter Bogaert - piano
Iris Skolidi - director

On February 8, March 8, April 12, and May 9, we will continue our vocal world tour. Would you like to join us? Purchase a discounted passe-partout for the entire GenZ Voice Recitals series before January 11. You will then receive a 10% discount on all five concerts.
Please note: passe-partout tickets will be available online later this week.