Biography
Geerte is a Dutch violinist and workshop leader with a special interest in cross-arts and improvisation. She collaborates and creates new work with dancers, electronic musicians, visual artists, actors, and a variety of musicians with different musical backgrounds from all over the world. To share her passion for music and composition with others, Geerte works as a workshop leader with a wide range of communities.
Geerte started playing the violin when she was 4 years old. In 2002 she was admitted to the Young Talent Class at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague, The Netherlands, where she studied with Hans Scheepers. She continued her violin studies in The Hague with Ilona Sie Dhian Ho and graduated with her Bachelor of Music in June 2013. Inspired by its rich and experimental music seen she moved to London where she specialised in improvisation, cross-arts and community art at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as part of the Artist Masters Programme. She graduated in 2015 with her final research performance ‘Interbeing'. Interbeing is a piece for 8 moving string players exploring the space between sound and movement. In her research Geerte has focused on the phenomenological experience of collaboration and the visual and physical aspects of her own practice as a violinist. |
Geerte is active in wide range of ensembles, bands and cross-arts collaborations and has played in concert halls and side-specific locations all over the world. She was one of the founders of the DaMu collective of instant composition and moving string ensemble TrioDuo. She has recently co-developed the innovative production 'Prikkel' as part of Oranjewoudfestival, Oerol and Grachtenfestival. Currently shy is working for Ludwig and developing Brainwave 4, an innovative programme in which science and art come together to create a new body of work responding to the important issues around communication in society.
As workshop leader Geerte creates new original work with a wide range of communities. She has worked for The Barbican, BBC Symphony Orchestra, The Guilhall School of Music and Drama and Royal Conservatory The Hague. She is one of the main workshop leaders of TivoliVredenburg and is currently developing the Music and Dementie program for Ludwig. Geerte has a wide range of teaching experience including the work with young children in the Muziek Route (an ongoing creative music program in primary schools, Overvecht) and Pi Music (music for young talented children in Utrecht). Out of her interest for improvisation, composition and creative music making Geerte developed into an innovative and experimental teacher. She is the main violin teacher of the Musicians 3.0 department at the HKU Utrechts conservatorium where young musicians are trained to become authentic makers, players and performers with a broad vision of art and specifically music. Her lessons include improvisation, composition and focus on the personal development and interests of the student including a wide variety of music stiles and techniques. From September 2015 till April 2016 Geerte lived and worked in Tanzania. It was an adventure in which she got the chance to work, play, sing, dance, create, explore and exchange with international and local communities in Tanzania and surrounding countries. |
Geerte is very thankful for the scholarships she received from the Prins Bernhard cultuurfonds, VSB Fonds, Stichting de Fundatie van de Vrijvrouwe van Renswoude and Guildhall Scholarship towards her studies in London.