Bird’s eye view

Straight out of the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague in 2015, Kluster5 collaborated with the illustrious composer Louis Andriessen on the dance performance Workers Union, featuring a cross section of his life’s work. Two years later, the Dutch festival Gaudeamus, ‘presenting young music pioneers’, invited them to be Ensemble-in-Residence.

Kluster5 was spotlighted in public broadcasting by VPRO from 2016 to 2018. When Aart Strootman wrote Shambling Emerge for them, it earned the composer the prestigious Matthijs Vermeulen Prize 2019. That same year, Kluster5 presented music by Celia Swart at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK.

Invited to contribute to the 2021 opening of the new concert hall and cultural encounter centre Amare in The Hague, Kluster5 surprised all with an outdoor physical workout. Freshly composed music energized the local community in spontaneous interaction.

For the ambitions of his 2022 album re;make, composer Remy Alexander considered the wide array of sonic possibilities of Kluster5 as essential. In the same year, Kluster5 launched their own visual album Perceived Reality: music accompanied by a full-length film. As initiators, writers, musicians and actors, they teamed up with director Gijs Besseling and 7 Mountain Records. Alexandre Kordzaia’s 1999 (Don’t you wanna go?) from this album is also performed in a staged version, enjoyed by thousands in the composer’s homeland of Georgia.