Klaartje
van Veldhoven

Storyteller

I love telling stories and taking people into the wonder and power of music and theater. To make the world stand still, and to be in a different place together for a moment. Music is - at least for me - something that moves and touches.

Being sung

On tour with Concerto Copenhagen and oboist Alfredo Bernardini, I performed in some of Scandinavia's most beautiful churches. Bach wrote beautiful duets for voice and oboe in his cantatas, including the title aria from Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen, about a believer seeking Jesus, who wants to embrace him. During the third concert, the feeling suddenly overwhelmed me that I was stepping out of myself, as if my body was opening up to the music and I was a conduit. A crazy experience.

Opera & Musical Theatre

In theater and opera, music takes on an extra layer through the narrative context and the atmosphere of sets, costumes and lighting. A simple melody can suddenly rise above itself. For example, in Opera2Day's performance Quarantine Island, I sang John Dowland's song "Come again," a bittersweet love song with intense and sensuous phrases like "To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die". I played a patient dying after singing the final line. It was outdoors, on an iron bed, with the audience around me. After I died, they walked on and I was left on the bed. I often heard sobbing around me. As a performer, you then have the feeling of becoming one with the audience. I look forward to working with Opera2day again next season, as the first Lady in Die Zauberflöte.

Chamber Music

The moment I am a soloist in front of an orchestra, it feels like chamber music to me; you make music together and react in the moment to what the other is doing. With an orchestra, this is one size bigger than with a string quartet, but the feeling is the same.
Leonard Eisenbroich complimented me on this when we performed Strauss songs in London. He had never worked with a soprano who listened so well to what the orchestra was doing. I appreciated the compliment, although for me that's completely natural.
The moment you sing together with a quartet or an orchestra you all make sure that the music takes wings and rises above itself and you do that by really working together, whether it's with Bach, Mozart or Strauss.

Albums

The main reason for making an album is the love I feel for certain pieces. I want to spend hours and days on that: to anchor and dive deep. Then you get to lose yourself in picking out music, studying, recording, and spending hours listening back to various takes and make choices. But I only do that with songs that I really feel I need to record and thereby (hopefully) add something to the recordings that are already out there. With the album Miroir de Peine with organist Matthias Havinga, this feeling was strong. This music by Hendrik Andriessen and Henk Badings is unknown, but incredibly beautiful and poignant. This work definitely deserves more attention.

More than classical

Even at the conservatory, I found it inspiring and enriching to go to jam sessions in the jazz department as well. Later on I worked a lot with musicians from jazz and improvisation backgrounds. I learned a lot from them: it expanded the space in my head. Music is less cast in concrete now. I think that cross-pollination is good for everyone whether in classical music or jazz. There's a lot to learn from each other. As jazz legend Duke Ellington noted, "There are only two kinds of music: good music and the other kind."