Belonging, for Storm in a Jar
08 July 2026
What we possess and what possesses us – these have always been political questions, philosophical questions, and quietly personal ones. Belonging: Everything I have, Nothing I own is a new song cycle for vocal quartet that tries to hold all three registers at once.
The work was composed for Storm in a Jar, a new vocal quartet whose sound made me want to write music that moves between the monumental and the intimate, between the chanted and the spoken, between a single sustained word and a long, searching sentence.
The texts are inspired by four sources, each of which approaches belonging from a different direction. Rosa Luxemburg writes about the land and the water – what was always here before us, what gets taken, what can never truly be owned. Hannah Arendt gives us the table: the space that stands between people, holding them together and apart, belonging to no one and therefore to everyone. James Baldwin asks us to look at each other, really look, and argues that this witnessing is the most fundamental thing we owe one another. And a fourth text, *Is My Name*, moves through the interior – the self inventorying everything it lays claim to, and ending with a question it cannot fully answer.
Storm in a Jar tour the work from September throughout the Netherlands, in a programme that also includes new compositions by Iannis Kyriakides, Nicoline Soeter and Rianne Wilbers, alongside music by Thelonious Monk. Tour dates 2026-2027 in the agenda.
VR poem Cycle in IFFR and SXSW
25 January 2026
The new virtual reality experience Cycle by visual artists and filmmakers Amit Palgi and Matunda Groenendijk will have its first public try-out at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), followed by its official world premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Cycle offers an immersive exploration of movement, time, and perception through a circular, meditative VR environment. Viewers are invited into a dynamic visual world where sound and motion continuously reshape one another, creating a sensory experience that evolves with every loop.
The music and sound design for Cycle are created by Poulson Sq. Their carefully layered score and sound effects form the sonic backbone of the work, blending acoustic warmth with immersive spatial sound.
With Cycle, Palgi and Groenendijk merge artistic vision and technological innovation, presenting a VR experience that highlights the possibilities of immersive storytelling in contemporary digital art.
>29/1-8/2 IFFR Rotterdam
>12/3-18/3 SXSW Austin Texas
Album Dance Works
14 December 2025
Over the past two decades, I have composed music for a variety of choreographers—sound worlds that do not stand alone but move, breathe, and respond. Music that follows the breath of a body, a scene, a beam of light, a gesture that cannot be repeated. Much of this work was written for dancers, and is therefore as fleeting as the performances it belonged to.
This album brings together a selection of that music, revisited now without the dance, yet still full of physical resonance. Each piece bears traces of the rehearsal studio, the stage, the tension of a premiere. The electronic textures, pulsing patterns, and whispered field recordings are fragments of worlds that once moved—now transformed into a space for listening.
The works stem from collaborations with choreographers who have shaped how I think about music and space each time: Wubkje Kuindersma, Jana Bitterovà, Pia Meuthen and Club Guy & Roni.
In a way, these compositions form their own choreography—of tone and texture, of memory and motion. They land here, for the first time together, as echoes of what was once performed, danced, and shared.
Available on all streaming platforms and on Bandcamp.
Album Battles & Silences
03 November 2025
During the First and Second World Wars, church bells were widely melted down into lethal weapons. As Europe is being sucked step by step into a new war on its own soil, HIIIT (formerly Slagwerk Den Haag) is reversing this process with Battles & Silences. In this project, weapons waste from the battlefield will form the basis for a new series of instruments and compositions in the coming years.
In the spring of 2024, eight kilograms of Ukranian bullet casings were melted into bars in Kyiv, shipped and remelted in the Netherlands into a new resonating bell that signals the start of the reversal: to turn destruction into beauty again. With Battles & Silences, HIIIT creates an alternative, immersive and imaginary landscape in which we create a space to listen to this transformation and commemorate our dire need for peace.
On 9 May 2025 at Friedensfest in Augsburg, Battles & Silences was premiered in the Moritzkirche. The performance is created by electronic duo Poulson Sq. (Anthony Fiumara & Mathijs Leeuwis) and features two HIIIT performers, Dirge Seçil Kuran and João Brito.
The album Battles & Silences combines the live performance in Augsburg with a rendering of the installation loops.
Battles & Silences is available via all streaming services and on Bandcamp.
Hyper_nature in Alluminous Light Festival
09 October 2025
Almere is a city of radical social engineering: built on the seabed, with carefully designed forests and parks. Here, the boundary between nature and construction blurs—the domain in which Hyper_nature unfolds.
During the Aluminous light festival, a dazzling cathedral of light and music emerges in the forest along the Weerwater. Jaap van Elzen places glowing arches between the trees, while the Black Pencil ensemble illuminates sounds that are as organic as they are artificial – a sacred, contemporary hymn to our hypernature.
It is wonderful to be able to develop this work of art on behalf of Black Pencil —Almere's city ensemble—in their own city. On October 20 the musicians will be playing live in the light installation.
More info on Alliuminous Light Festival.