Sunday July 21 Final Concert in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam

Wow, already the last day. It all went unbelievably fast...!!
Arriving in the Concertgebouw around 11am we start with the general rehearsal. Everybody is a bit nervous and excited. The Concertgebouw..... this is really something. Who gets the opportunity to play on this world famous stage? We do!!

At 14.15 the concert starts. The hall is filled with lots of family, friends and people we don't know. They are here to listen to Pieter Wispelwey, Emily and all of us. To be honest, we are quite proud to see that so many people came.

We play the prélude of the Holberg Suite this year for the first time by heart. So much nicer for the audience and it was not too difficult to practice it and to get it into our heads.
After that the audience sees the video. We made short videos during the week with our mobile phones, sent them to Ruben Stern, who made them into a nice sphere impression. So much fun to see Jeroen on the film waving his arms and making the most funny sounds.

Then until the break solo's, ensembles, flute orchestra and the moving Villa-Lobos with Pieter Wispelwey follow. What a great cellist he is! Rozemarijn played her Hosokawa, the talk of the town during the break when we mingle with the audience. We hear conversations about it. 'Did you like it...?', 'Exciting piece', 'Never knew one could make all these sounds on a flute' and more of this.

After the break more solo's, ensembles and finish with the Pezzo Capriccioso of Tsjaikovsky where Pieter plays another beautiful solo. Jeroen made an exceptional good arrangement, it sounded all lovely together.

Applause from the audience and super enthusiastic reactions afterwards. Yes, we did it!

Time to thank the staff, change to our normal clothes, go to the Concertgebouw café for our farewell drink. Farewell..... we don't want to leave. Can we stretch the moment to say goodbye to everybody? To our Neflac friends? To our buddies? The staff?

We look back upon a remarkable Neflac Summer Academy and fortunately we know Neflac continues.

See you!

Saturday July 20 Koetshuis

We are just back from the second concert of today, in the Dorpskerk in Rheden. It’s difficult to describe this day because it has been very long and for that reason we are very tired now and we should go to bed because tomorrow we have another concert in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, but we will give you a short summary about our day.

We started this day with a Warming-up. After that we went to the church in Rheden for a general rehearsal. We want to thank all people who drove us there. After a whole morning of playing and rehearsing we ate our lunch and went to Park Sonsbeek.

The weather was quite good so the atmosphere in the park was great. We enjoyed to play for all different people in the audience and the concert went quite well.

We went back to Rhederoord to eat dinner and we went back to the church again to give the concert. This evening the programme was composed by various pieces. In some pieces we all were involved (Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Offermans), in others only the YIP or the NTK (Feld, Avine) and some solo-pieces. We really enjoyed the concert and the public thought we played very well. It was amazing to give a concert together with Pieter Wispelwey, he plays so amazing!!! As we already told it was a wonderful concert, and now we are going to sleep.

We are looking forward giving a concert in the Concertgebouw tomorrow! Goodnight!

Sandrine, Rosanne, Anita, Chantal

Rosanne

Sandrine

Anita (middle)

Sandrine and Chantal

Let's put the flute down and listen to this wonderful cellist...

This is the fifth day of a very busy week so we are extremely exhausted and just want to go to bed... But we still wanted to give you a summary about the fifth day of the fifth year of Neflac. Today' s guest was the famous and fabulous cellist Pieter Wispelwey. His playing and speech was amazing. At the evening rehearsal with him he blew us away but we still had to play pianisssssssssiiisssssssimo and extra short staccati. Poor him- he didn't know that a contrabass flute can only do: whoaaaaa. :)

After the orchestra rehearsal and dinner outside (yay! it tasted so great AGAIN!) Suzanne interviewed Pieter about performing, practising, communicating with the audience, travelling, cancelling concerts when you have a morning crisis (haha it is a joke!!! He is very ironic!)...His energy was unbelievable even at this time of day (it's 22:40!!!) So that explains why we stop writing now and go to bed. Suzanne and Emily are very strict about our bedtime today and tomorrow because we will have three concerts in two days. Even Pieter doesn't have three concerts in two days!!

Fiona, Miriam and Zsuzsi

Zsuzsi

Fiona Zsuzsi Miriam

Fiona

  

When we woke up this morning and went downstairs for breakfast, a few F-jes were already waiting for us. They immediately joined  us with our warming-up exercises. It was so great to play with them the funniest game of the whole week, Anna Maria Koekoek, they were also taught the song Hoofd, Schouders, Knie en Teen in the special Neflac way. After this we followed theme lessons with Jeroen and Wieke about posture and articulation. In the lesson about articulation was also some improvisation involved, which we all enjoyed very much. The F-jes did surprisingly well and we were astounded  by their confidence.

The rest of the morning consisted of private lessons by Emily, Jeroen, Wieke and Andrew and after that it was time to go outside for the lunch. The teachers who came to visite the Open Day with their students also joined us and they agreed on the food being amazingly good at Rhederoord.

After lunch time, the flute exposition from Adams was ready for us to try different flutes. It felt like being a child in a sweetshop. So much, that a couple of NTK'ers decided to make a cake, a special cake, a NEFLAC-5-years-cake! Douwe and Rosanne made a beautiful cake to celebrate this special moment. Of course, it was organic and tasted delicious.

For the first time in the 5 years of Neflac summer academy, we had a FREE evening! A barbecue had been arranged to enjoy the beautiful summer evening. After this we had a long walk in the beautiful woods which surrounds Rhederoord. a perfect way to close a special day like this.

 

Neflac right now!

Hoi lieve bloglezers en -lezeressen,

Na een prachtige ochtendwandeling door het Rhederoordse bos gingen de NTK'ers toonladders en akkoorden spelen, de YIPpers vervolgden het verhaal over ademhalen. We hebben optimaal genoten van het mooie weer en allemaal een heerlijke buitenplek opgezocht om te studeren. Na inspirerende lessen van Emily, Jeroen en Wieke en een gezellige ensembleles stonden we allen weer zeer hongerig in de rij voor het diner. Voldaan namen we hierna plaats in de Trouwzaal om een workshop van Wieke Karsten bij te wonen. Making Music, Practising and the Brain was de naam van deze workshop. Jullie zullen vast denken dat we nu alles weten over studeren en muziek maken, maar helaas, volgens de statistieken zijn we op dit moment alweer 40% vergeten..... Gelukkig zijn we niet vergeten om voor jullie dit prachtige blog bij te werken!

Bovenstaand verhaal klinkt wellicht wat saai, maar uiteraard zijn we alleen maar aan het genieten!! We leren allemaal ontzettend veel, raken gemotiveerd en geinspireerd door elkaar en het allerbelangrijkst: we hebben heel erg veel lol! We vinden het erg jammer dat de helft van de week alweer voorbij is, maar zien uit naar de open dag morgen en de concerten dit weekend!

Daniel, Hilde en Rozemarijn

3rd Day on the Neflac Odyssey!

Do you think that Neflac is only about flute, flute, flute ... FLUTE, and flute playing??? YOU ARE SO WRONG!!!!!

Today we had a very variated and busy day, but let's start from the beginning:

After a healthy breakfast (yoghurt, cereals, fruit, bread, cheese, ham, eggs, rhubarb jam, etc.) Wieke gave us a really intense warming up. We learned how to make the "Neflac Shaking Wave"!!!

Then yes! It was about flute... but the teachers we have are amazing. Flute lessons, Masterclasses, Clinics and theme lessons were on our list for today.

The best (if this is possible) was to come!.....  Bass flutes, double bass flutes, alto flutes, piccolo flutes and just flutes were our tools to make lots of noise wih pieces from composers like Grieg, Tchaikovsky. An amazing piece from Will Offermans called  Bamburia was also played!!! Ole Ole y Ole! Fantastic flamenco solo by Pedro!

After dinner (red couscous and tasty dutch fries included) we had a great, funny and intense rhythm workshop with Niels van Hoorn. We nearly learned Portuguese and some people are still trying to make their legs and arms work together!

Now it is time to rest, but please, enjoy upcoming news from us!

Kisses from

Lisette, Mizuki, Pieter and Pedro

“let’s go down and do a bourree”

For the day started really early, with a happy birthday song for Fiona. After this cheerful beginning we had a funny warming-up with Joost and his rainbow-coloured blanket. We were jumping, spinning and waving our arms happily in the sun. We continued our morning with Jeroen and his famous breathing exercises. We learned that there is always some more space in our body to save some more air. The day went by quickly with interesting lessons with Emily and Jeroen. The highlight of the day was the workshop for baroque dance. We learned that dance in the baroque period was not for fun but to show that you are from the upper class. Surprisingly men were obsessed by showing their beautiful legs and hiding broad shoulders. In opposite, women were not supposed to show more than the ankles, and this also only in very special moments of the music. After trying to learn the Menuett, to everyone’s great pleasure we could see Emily dancing with the dance teacher beautifully.

Now we are going to dance up to our warm and inviting beds.

Katinka, Kim and Agnes

Kim....?

NTK

bourrée or menuet or....

First day at Rhederoord!

Finally, the week in Rhederoord has begun! We started with an introduction of how things work here, and afterwards we learned each other’s names through a little game.

The next thing on the planning was the podium presentation with Jos Groenier. Here we learned to walk on stage and to face the audience – especially to look in the eyes of the public – and to be grounded on the floor. This is to get rid of the tension in the upper body and to open your breathing. After a short break we started the concerts with the NTK. Everybody played beautifully. It was very nice to hear how well the old ones improved. Then we went outside with Joost and did some concentration exercises. This didn’t work for everybody, so it was a lot of fun. The dinner was great; we ate beef with rice, potatoes, and scampi. As a dessert there was fruit with strawberry sauce. The day ended with the YIP’ers concert.

We’re expecting some great weather, so we’re looking forward to the rest of this week. We’ll keep you updated!

Julia, Eline, Delphine

Julia                                                                                                                                    Eline