Outtakes

Jan 02, 2004
The goal of Stichting Vom Himmel hoch is to promote the culture that is connected with ancient churches. During the last year we organized 17 concerts in different historical churches in the region of the "Noordelijke IJsselvallei", the area round the cities of Kampen, Zwolle and Deventer.

In our concerts we like to make a combination of culture that is traditionally connected with the European ancient churches (mostly gregorian chant and organ music) together with music and poetry from other cultures that "fit into this (devotional) concept".

After a year of traveling from church to chuch we have contacted a single church in our area (Dominicanenkerk Zwolle) where we will organize concerts every month (on the forth Friday) in the next year (starting in january). These concerts have the character of a meditation, which means mostly that there will be short periods of silence during the concert and that we select music of "small arrangements".

In the concerts we like to show the similarity of different cultures over the world. For this reason we use "themes" that come from different (religious) cultures over the world (although most of them are christian, islamic or jewish) and are current for the time of the year. For example our theme in January is "sacrifice", inspired by the sacrificial feast (2nd of Februari). This theme as we see it is open for many different cultures, religious and non-religious, ancient and modern.

The gregorian chant of the concerts series will mostly be sung by Gregoriana from Amsterdam (www.gregoriana.tk). These three singers try to discover how gregorian chant has sounded in the time long before music was written down. Because of mostly historical assumptions (for example by regarding the "schisma between east and west in christian history") they believe that ancient gregorian chant must have sounded much more as music from the east.

Here's the complete list of dates and themes for the next period:

Friday January 23, sacrifice (because of the sacrificial feast)
Friday February 27, fasting (because of the christian and islamic traditions)
Friday March 26, exodus (because of the jewish tradition)
Friday April 23, rising (because of easter)
Friday May 28, insight (because of whitsun and the holy gost)
Friday June 25, comprehension (because of the jewish tradition of the destruction of the temples)