Pics of the final concert

 

Sunday August 13...final concert!

Sunday morning we could get up a little later. After breakfast Emily, Suzanne, Wieke en Jeroen made sure everyone was on the huge bus with all their stuff. At 10:30 we arrived at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. It felt super professional to enter through 'the artists entrance' (omg!). We went to the 'Kleine Zaal' to practise all our positions, going off and on stage, etc.

But first we watched a great video Suzanne made. We looked back to the great week we just had.

After the video (We had a lot of fun seeing ourselves doing the activities during the workshops) we practised how to get on the stage. It wasn't the nicest activity this week but it had to be done, especially how we sqeezed the whole group on the small stairs.

Then we had lunch in a sort of place only accessable for the artists. And the concert started after we tuned the flutes.

The concert was great. 

A very special concert hall that made us feel very close to our public. Everything was as planned and we could enjoy the whole concert playing and listening to our colleagues. 

From flute orchestra to solo flute, the public could enjoy flute and piano duos as well as piano "quatre mains" from our two piano soloists, Andrew West and Mekhitar Ghazaryan. 

Special guest in the public, the composer of the Little Italian Overture, W.Stolarczyk came all the way from Denmark to share with us the world premiere of his piece! 

The concert ended up with a touching standing ovation, which made us feel very fortunate of living a very special moment. This applause was directly from all of us to the unique team that made possible this week, our beloved Emily Beynon, Suzanne Wolff, Wieke Karsten and Jeroen Bron and for  the continuation of what nowadays we feel very lucky to have been part of. NEFLAC, Thank you!

 

Diana, Titia, Ilaya

impression of Neflac Summer Academy 2017

As always we wanted the audience to have a brief impression what the Summer Academy was like. We can't show all, but pick a theme and try to squeeze in as much as possible in 3 minutes of what the participants experience. See this years video here, circling around the key words connection, friendship, making music TOGETHER, the power of music.
Other videos of former Summer Academies can be seen on the Neflac youtube channel

Great concert!!!

Hello readers!
How are you? Today we had the concert and rehearsal in the church. We had breakfast and walked to the church in de Steeg. We had to walk with umbrellas because it was raining a lot!!! When we arrived the curch wasn't open yet. So we had to walk back to Rhederoord and we had our warming-up there. We played a few flute games. You start with the tone the person before you played and Wieke invited us to invent  an other sound.
After this we walked back to the church with all our heavy stuff, the rain and the cold weather.
We could finally start our rehearsal. We had to walk on and off stage a lot of times. Unfortunately we didn't break the record to go on stage in fourteen seconds. We had a nice try but we needed fifteen. We heard for the first time Mekhitar and Emily playing together Garun by Komitas and Aria by O. Taktakishvili.
We went to park Sonsbeek but it was raining cats and dogs! So Suzanne decided to cancel the concert. We did an informal concert in the Koetshuis. We played our ensembles. We are impressed by the quartet flute of Yip named Rocking Quartet. They had a great show!
We went back to Rhederoord and we had to go secretly to our rooms because their was a wedding downstairs.
At the end of the day we had our first concert in the church.
All the ensembles played and also three solos by Robin, Imogen and Diana. It was a great concert and we had a lot of fun!
We look forward to our next concert tomorrow in Concertgebouw!

Gabrielle wrote an extra piece, so here it is...

For today we had two concerts planned: one in Park Sonsbeek and one in De Boecop church.
When we walked to the church this morning for our general rehearsal we discovered that the church wasn’t open yet. So back we went for some warming up at Rhederoord. After that we went back to the church again for the general rehearsal. We practised getting on and off the stage in the right order in as little time as possible, the record was 15 sec!
Then a group of lovely people drove us to the park for the concert at Sonsbeek. While we were driving the rain started pouring down. So after arriving at Sonsbeek we had to make the tough decision of cancelling the concert. Instead we played at Het Koetshuis. We had a great time playing in our ensembles, we even had an ensemble of a YIP'er and het two NTK buddies!
After filling ourselves with dinner and lots of desserts we walked to the curch again for the concert at De Boecop. Playing at the church was great! The composer of a piece we played called A Little Italian Ouverture was there to listen!

Overall we think this was a great day and we’re looking foreward to the concert at Het Concertgebouw tomorrow!

Silvana, Gabrielle and Jade

getting to know our soloists

greet & meet Mekhitar

Today was the last day of lessons for both NTKS and YIPers.
We began the day with chi-kung, which was really inspiring and quite energizing near all the big trees.

Some of us had still lessons, or masterclasses, or a technical clinic - your kind of flute appointment with teacher - and a masterclass on orchestral auditions. The YIPers learned quite a few tricks from Emily to deal with stress, but it's a secret (contains swear words so shhhh)

Then, after a well-deserved dinner and the last flute orchestra rehearsal, we met  Mekhitar Ghazaryan the Armenian pianist we were dying to meet. Andrew did quite the show at the interview, we had very much fun.

Everyone seems excited about the concerts, we hope to see everyone from our readers there !

Sarah, Janneke, Nina

More for less

Thanks to a donation to Neflac of great sheet music we are able to buy much wanted repertoire for a very low price!

what a great place!

Aren't we lucky to live here for a week?

At last...a free evening!

Thursday evening the traditional BBQ and a long walk in the national park.

Thursday August 10th

We have made it past the halfway mark of Neflac 2017, and this morning saw a few droopy eyelids and heavy feet enter the dining hall for breakfast. However, we are all still ready for a jam-packed day! We began as normal with our 8.30am warm up session in the woods, which today involved three tiny juggling balls, some virtual swimming and a giant human wave.

The mornings normally mean different things for each of us individually - today some of us had a class on Alexander technique with Maaike Aarts. We focused on body awareness with the help of relaxing exercises, such as laying on the ground and resting our heads on a pile of books. For some of us it was hard not to fall asleep! We learned a lot, which we can transfer in our future flute playing.

In the afternoon after masterclasses and rehearsals separately, the NTKers and YIPers came together for flute orchestra! As we are getting closer and closer to our final concerts all of the pieces are coming together and we are really looking forward to performing on the weekend.
During the rehearsal our minds were all on one thing... the smell drifting through the window from the BBQ just outside! As we all had a free evening together, we enjoyed a delicious BBQ and were lucky enough to take a beautiful walk through the national park while the weather cleared up.

After our relaxing evening we are feeling ready to tackle tomorrow, but for now it's time to get some sleep!

Guido, Firiël, Sarah and Kyla

Neflac wednesday

Hello everybody.

We are Elodie and Nina, and we'll write your blog today.

We began our day with yoga. This was very difficult, because we had to be very flexibel and we're NOT! After the yoga the yippers had great lessons with amazing Emily Beynon. We all had a great warming up and theme lesson. Here we had a lot of fun and learned much. Every day we have lessons, master classes, warming ups and theme lessons. But today was different. We spent much time with the ensembles and flute orchestra. The music we play is very nice, but we won't tell much about the music, because it's our secret for the concert. After the flute orchestra we all needed a rest, so we had diner. The diner was very nice and tasted good.

This evening we had workshop dalcroze. This is about rytm with space and movements. We had a lot of excersices and also much fun. We all laugh together and enjoyed our evening. Now it's 21:53 and we are all tired, so we are going to sleep early.

I hope you enjoyed our blog and sleep well!

Bye!! Kisses from Elodie and Nina

No words needed while making music together

Otto de Jong showed us how music connects people, and that everyone can make music together, even without speaking each others language.

About Tuesday August 8

We started the day with a lovely fresh morning walk in the woods. When we reached the top of what is probably the only hill in the Netherlands, we began our morning warm ups with Wieke. After some physical warm-ups, we began to work on a 'Neflac Yell'. Some of the NTK had designed their own which they showed to everyone. However, Wieke found this one to violent so showed us her own. No decision has yet been made as to what this years 'official' Neflac yell will be. It is very likely that we may have to vote on it as a matter of urgency. We will keep you posted with the result. 

Gareth who we had the wonderful contemporary techniques class with yesterday was kind enough to stay behind a day and bring along a selection of lovely Haynes flutes for us to try. Sadly all the shiny new flutes left with him, but we did all receive free Haynes pencils COMPLETE WITH AN ERASER!! No lack of pencil excuses allowed in rehearsals anymore! 

In the afternoon we had a workshop on breathing with everyone's favourite, Jeroen. The class was very useful and it was really great to learn about how the body's system of breathing works. However, some people didn't quite understand straight away and this has to be the quote of the day:

 Jeroen: How does the diaphram work?

Anonymous: By coming out of the body

Emily: Well you better run and get it back!

We all picked up valuable breathing exercises and techniques which we will be incorporating into our playing so prepare to be quite literally blown away in the upcoming concerts. They're guaranteed to be breathtaking. 

In the evening, we had a workshop with Otto de Jong from 'Musicians without Borders'. I think everyone would agree that the class was very fun, yet it was also very moving to hear about his work in conflict zones. We all partook in rhythmic games, singing activities and then transferred some of these ideas on to the flute.

We've all had a lovely day!

Peace and Love,

Fleur, Erika, Robin and Epsie

sneak preview...

Flute orchestra rehearsal of Lamasery Jigsaw, composed by Gareth McLearnon and conducted by the composer himself. This piece will be played at the concerts. Last night was the first time the orchestra played it. Be assured that on Saturday and Sunday, with more rehearsals in the pocket, it will sound spectacular!!

The extended flute sounds of Gareth McLearnon

Monday afternoon Gareth McLearnon gave a workshop on extended flute techniques and this is how that sounds!

Turtle neck bow

To bow or not to bow....that's the question!

Look at Roberta Alexander if you want to avoid the wrong bow 😁😁

Eventful Monday

What an eventful day it has been! From early morning walks to making whale sounds on the flute, Neflac is already proving to be an exciting experience.

After warm-ups in the woods it was a busy morning for everyone with individual lessons, rehearsals with Andrew and a session focussing on intonation. This was a great way to prepare for the busy day ahead!

The afternoon involved masterclasses with Emily, and a session on extended techniques with Gareth McLearnon. In the masterclasses we learnt (amongst many other things!) a lot about posture, how to use vibrato and the importance of being relaxed whilst breathing.
Gareth's class was both insightful and inspiring, finishing with an impromptu performance of Ian Clarke's famous 'Zoom Tube' - not only was it very useful to find out all about the modern extended techiniques, he also showed us how we could use them in everyday flute practice to improve all other aspects of our flute playing. (Some NTKs actually compared his appearance to Ryan Reynolds.....)


But there was STILL MORE TO COME!!!
After dinner we all gathered together for flute orchestra!! We had a complete variety of flutes in the mix, even including two contrabass flutes! With Gareth and Jeroen conducting, together we played through the repertoire for the concerts later on in the week. Already it sounds like it will be a weekend full of great music!!

WOW we are all exhausted after our first full day! What will tomorrow have in store...

Cressida, Imogen, Fennie and Nina
XOXO

Famous last minutes of a long Monday

Flute orchestra rehearsal...Mozart can be proud of this lot 😊♫♪♬

Wake up and walk

Warming-up: a walk in the park and exercises under century old trees!

Neflac 2017: day one!

Hello and welcome to the neflac 2017 blog!

We all arrived this morning to sunny Rhederoord, where we were greeted by Emily, Wieke and Jeroen. After an initial welcome meeting we all got to know each other quickly through playing Wieke's excellent ice-breakers. Each person has been given a buddy from the corresponding group, which means that not only do the two groups have a better chance of mixing, but we also each have someone to look out for us. And for the YIPers, someone to help improve their Dutch! After a break for lunch, the fabulous (and incredibly entertaining) Roberta Alexander gave us a masterclass in performance practice. This certainly came in handy when we all later had to perform in front of each other - we were all much more confident when it came to giving our audience a quick introduction to our chosen repertoire.

We're all now looking forward to get to know each other even more in what looks to be a jam-packed week with a good deal of learning. Let's hope the good weather continues!

Ellie, Bianca, Juliette and Gudrun

YIP presentation concert

After 15 wonderful NTK performances, now it is 12 YIPers turn to play for us!

NTK in concert

Nervous? Of course! 😦

To say my name loud and clear!

World famous soprano Roberta Alexander teaches the do's and dont's on stage...

9e Neflac Zomeracademie op Rhederoord!

Can you imagine...? Already the 9th(!) Neflac Summer Academy here at Rhederoord. A welcome with home made brownies. Yes!!!

Who is who