ISOLDE TROOST

It's been a while since this concert. It doesn't make it any less awesome. To be honest, when I first got the score - about two weeks before concert - I did a bit of a deer-in-headlights impression when looking at the rythms, because as catchy as it sounds, the first time you look at it it's gibberish. At least, if your sightreading skills are equal to mine. Then I girded up my loins, so to speak (although I'm not entirely certain a woman's supposed to do that. Pretty sure th

I’m sure some of you’ll have seen the Facebook update regarding one of the pieces I played last Sunday. For those who didn’t – it very subtly encouraged me to premiere a week-old piece by announcing to the world that it was finished and pondering whether or not I’d be able to play it within the week. Challenge, of course, accepted – and therefore last Sunday, I officially premiered a piece that didn’t exist yet the Sunday before. Sleep is for the weak, I guess..! Anyway – per

And so, after two(ish) weeks of rehearsal, we came to performance day, and it was awesome. Our final “normal” rehearsal had been Wednesday night, in which the Grand Finale was choreographed – to my singing the piece, because the dancers needed a mirror to do the actual choreographing, which was only available in the dance studio, which didn’t have a piano in it. Thus I spent this rehearsal trying to sing a three-part harmony with myself, which probably would’ve gone a lot be

I met Emma Brown in the first year of my Bachelor's degree in The Hague. I needed a singer to work with for my duo class, so essentially what happened is that I ambushed her in the canteen one afternoon and demanded she work with me. Miraculously, she agreed. Our very first lesson with duo coach Han-Louis Meijer was scheduled three days later, and we, innocent, green and overconfident as we were, decided that about an hour's worth of rehearsal was quite enough. We left Han-Lo