Overview

Holland Baroque will return to Suriname in November 2024 for a musical encounter with the students of the School for Young Talent in Paramaribo. We will do so together with talented singers Lucretia Starke and Arturo den Hartog. They attended this choir school as children and are now studying at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Together with the students of the School for Young Talent, we will undertake all kinds of activities and give several concerts in the Sint-Petrus-en-Paulus Cathedral in Paramaribo for a week.

That there is a children’s choir in Suriname that engages with classical music at such a high level is the reason for this initiative. Holland Baroque wants to continue to support these qualities in Suriname and show the Netherlands how great these youngsters sing in choirs.

In May 2022, the Holland Baroque orchestra visited the School for Young Talent Suriname (SJTS) in Paramaribo for a week. Together with the students and members of the Kathedrale Koorschool and the Kathedrale Jongerenkoor, a programme was rehearsed to be performed in, among others, the St Peter and Paul Cathedral in Paramaribo. Lucretia Starke and Arturo den Hartog travelled with them. Beitske de Jong made a report on our trip. An overview of the episodes can be found here. Together, we performed a number of concerts in Suriname, only to continue the collaboration in the Netherlands at the AvroTrosVrijdag-Jubilee Concert in honour of Utrecht’s 900th anniversary of city rights. The documentary ‘Baroque in Paramaribo’ can be watched back via NPO Start and the concert can also be listened to here.

In addition, Holland Baroque won the REMA Award in the ‘Education Project of the Year’ category with its earlier project Baroque in Paramaribo.

This project was made possible by the Mondriaan Fund (the public fund for visual art and culturel heritage), Cultuurfonds Suriname and the Dutch Embassy in Suriname.