Support the Amsterdam University Fund

Who?  The UvA-Orchestra J.Pzn Sweelinck, known as the Sweelinck orchestra, is a student orchestra that is connected to the University of Amsterdam which consists of eighty young enthusiastic members who make music on a high level, besides their studies. Every year the orchestra performs in great music halls such as the Muziekgebouw aan t’ IJ and The Royal Concertgebouw and asks young, up-and-coming talents to perform with us. What?  This spring, the orchestra will embark on a new program that is quite different both from other regular programs that the Sweelinck orchestra usually plays and from the programming of professional orchestras. We want to collaborate with the young and talented musicians of the Nieuw Amsterdams Klarinet Kwartet, composer Willem van Merwijk and director Pepijn Cladder. Together, these four parties want to organize three unique concerts, of which the concert in The Concertgebouw will be our last. We want to make it a unique experience by performing the world premiere of the piece Ríos that was composed especially for the Sweelinck orchestra and the clarinet quartet by Guillermo Lago (pseudonym of Willem van Merwijk). The audience will be excited in unusual ways with the help of director Pepijn Cladder. The musicians will be moving through the concert hall during the concert, and during the break the audience will be enticed by fragments of the music of the second part of the concert. Why do we need your help? We really need your financial support for this project! If you make a donation you will enable us to rent The Royal Concertgebouw and perform on the stage where such great names tread every day. You also enable an educational and informative experience for the members of the orchestra by allowing them to perform and to learn from the professionals that participate in this project. This collaboration truly inspires our musicians to keep playing and practice their instruments. But probably the most important contribution you will make by donating to this project, is that you allow us to break away from a stiff, to some, classical concert experience, and to attract young audiences to a refreshing experience with classical music through an accessible program with visual stimuli. We are already supported by different funding projects and our orchestra members contribute financially to take part in this project as well. However, there is still a gap left that we need to try and fill with this crowdfunding.  Especially in this day and age, where less and less people are playing an instrument and classical music seems to become something for an elite group, it is of the utmost importance to realize a project like this.