Live ambient at the Vishal

My setup with Grote
of St.Bavokerk view.

It should be the beginning of a series of ambient concerts to be organised in the Vishal, situated in front of the Grote of St.Bavokerk / Great Church of Haarlem. I was approached by Joost Verhagen of the Haarlemse Popscene to accompany Belgian ambient act Premonition Factory (aka Sjaak Overgauw) for the kick off of this special "Visfest" event at this excellent location, which definitely has great potentional to make its continuation in 2013.
The exhibition space in the centre of Haarlem offers perfect ambiance and acoustics to fit with the kind of music that was performed yesterday.
At this moment there has been exposed art by Piet Zwaanswijk and Gerrit van Dijk. Prominent Haarlem artist Gerrit van Dijk passed away recently (December 4th), yet wishing the organisation good luck with yesterday's event. Also with approval of his family the performances luckily weren't due to be cancelled.

Co-organiser Peter Stufkens started the afternoon with a talk about the current exhibition, as well as a short history about the origin of ambient music. Accompanied with a demonstration on his Korg Monotron.


Premonition Factory.

After this I started my set of approximately 50 minutes. From the beginning the ambiance felt very comfortable and - also because of the kind of location and the seated area - the 20-30 people audience attended the atmospheric circumstances in absolute silence. The perfect circumstances for a musician!
My setlist:
1. Opening (from "i-Dentity")
2. new untitled track
3. Return of Planet X - part 5 (from the Great Church performance, May 2012)



Me and Sjaak Overgaauw.

As soon as I was finished, Premonition Factory started his gig, which contained (in contrast with my more sequencer-based tracks) pure ambient. Excellent atmospheric music with subtile changes within the tracks to keep everything very interesting for the 45 minutes of the set. Really enjoyed!

After this second concert the successful afternoon ended and I really hope (and actually assume, according to the over-all reactions of the audience, the organisation and the Vishal crew) this kind of events will see a continuation on regular base at this location.

Thanks a lot for the organisation / Haarlemse Popscene, the Vishal crew, Sjaak Overgaauw, and all visitors to make this happen. Already looking very forward to a next edition!