Ensemble Sketch351 artist-in-residence at Festival Dag in de Branding

Ensemble Sketch351 has been selected for a talent development trajectory as artist-in-residence at Festival Dag in de Branding. They will be performing in the festival from September 2024 to June 2026.

Ensemble Sketch351 was founded in 2020 at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, and has an unusual line-up: flute (Teresa Costa), trombone (Daniel Martins), cello (Alice Andreani), piano (Inês Lopes) and percussion (Ricardo Oliveira). Because tjere is no music available for this line-up, the ensemble has had to be creative from the start and has challenged various composers to write for them. The ensemble prefers to work with composers of their own generation, and has a preference for interdisciplinary projects. For example, they created the virtual opera It Rose Behind the River together with composer Nuno Lobo and visual artist and designer Pedro Lobo.

During their trajectory at Festival Dag in de Branding, the ensemble will further explore all creative aspects of performing, organizing projects, developing ideas and concepts together with the team of Festival Dag in de Branding, and will be collaborating with young composers and artists from other disciplines.

The ensemble writes: “Sketch351 is a group of curious musicians going through a collective identity crisis while trying to find their place on today’s music scene. In this contradictory realm where they sometimes feel on the verge of entering a Kafka’s novel, they resort to their humor and their innate playfulness to navigate the absurdity of it all and to help them guide their creative process.”

In this self-learning journey, they stumbled upon one of the Fluxus Movement’s manuals. This discovery inspired them and encouraged them to embrace the nonsense and the chaos, transforming their artistic exploration into a musical playground where all ideas are valid and where, like children, they try to make sense of the world around them through play.
Expect a whole lot of things and nothing at the same time as the group present the most recent version of themselves and an excerpt of what will become their final performance on Dag in de Branding in 2026.