In Spraakmakers, a new festival that combines classical music with contemporary stories, actress Jade Olieberg and Holland Baroque, together with the Polish Bastarda Trio, combine the ideas and music of the medieval mystics Hadewijch and Hildegard von Bingen to create a stimulating story about spirituality, sensuality and women’s autonomy: ‘Free Femininity’.
In a fourth, remarkable wave of feminism, a new awareness of female autonomy is developing. Angela Merkel shows leadership in ways in which her identity as a woman is separated from the need to please others. Superstars like Beyoncé and Billie Eilish present themselves as women who are seductive, powerful and confident. Their provocative appearance is also part of our current ideas on feminism. Surprisingly, this way of thinking has two distant predecessors: mystics Hadewijch and Hildegard von Bingen. They too, in the Middle Ages, were representatives of an autonomous, sexually aware and “inclusive” feminism. They wrote books and music independently of men, a phenomenon that was unique at that time.
Spraakmakers is a new festival that combines classical music with contemporary stories. It connects the voices of well-known master storytellers such as Gijs Scholten van Aschat and Ramsey Nasr with the music of top Dutch ensembles such as Holland Baroque. Together they craft captivating stories about today’s world and match these with works of classical music to create a new narrative. The festival consists of three mini concerts with surprise performances and intermissions in between.
Order tickets for 22 – 27 March
