Musical Utopias Festival: Kika Sprangers Lise Morrison & Alex Pearl, Anna-Louise Walton & Wim van Egmond, Michael Gordon, Schupp & Van Dijk, Go-Eun Im

Wonder Turner Pieces
Lise Morrison, Alex Pearl & Ensemble Klang
Composer Lise Morrison has roots in South Africa, and her instrumental and electroacoustic works explore repetition and subtle changes within fragile environments.

Together with visual artist Alex Pearl, she creates a hypnotic collection of flickering images and music, full of illusion and magic, inspired by historical thaumatrope devices to contemporary GIFs.

New Work
Anna-Louise Walton, Wim van Egmond & Ensemble Klang
Micro-videographer Wim van Egmond captures stop-motion films at the intersection of science and art, that play with human perception. Together with composer Anna-Louise Walton he created a brand new work exploring the magic of organic systems.

Reflecting on his work, Wim told us: ‘I’ve been doing this for about thirty years. Every time I discover a new little creature, I see things I’ve never seen before. It’s an endless world’.

That sense of wonder was present in everything he showed us. Not as something grand or dramatic, but as a quiet, contagious curiosity. It’s exactly this spirit that flows into the new work he created together with composer Anna-Louise Walton for Musical Utopias.
A collaboration that explores the magic of organic systems, translating microscopic movement and structure into an immersive musical experience.

Hyper (Michael Gordon)
Ensemble Klang & Schupp & Van Dijk
A hyperactive, hyper-energetic, ever-circling adventure into wonderlands of impossible geometric shapes and forms, Michael Gordon’s Hyper takes as its point of inspiration the Penrose Stairs, used in M.C. Escher’s art, to conjure a musical work in continual ascent.

Performed in an arrangement for Ensemble Klang, Hyper is a true Klang classic and is reinforced for this performance with video art by Schupp & Van Dijk.

The film by Schupp & Van Dijk was recorded and made during the first corona-lockdown (March-June 2020): each performer recorded their part individually to be then layered on top of each other for the finished result.

The musical and visual content, can be seen as a metaphor for that lockdown situation: a controlled stasis, a recurring day, with recurring patterns and behaviours that collectively blurs time to create an altogether ‘other’ experience.Hyper’s live performance during Musical Utopias  promises to be a unique experience!

The Way Wild Rivers Flow (NSJ Compositieopdracht 2025: Kika Sprangers)
Kika Sprangers & band
In the Studio saxophonist and composer Kika Sprangers presents her latest work: The Way Wild Rivers Flow, an adaptation of the composition she wrote this summer for North Sea Jazz 2025. In this quintet, Sprangers delivers a dynamic performance in which her characteristic lyricism and rich harmonies play the leading role.

Sprangers’ music is melodious, compelling, and layered, with a refined interplay between composition and improvisation. Expect a concert full of imagination, emotion, and ensemble playing of the highest quality.