Program Fira B! 2022
North Sea String Quartet (NL)
The North Sea String Quartet is one of the most versatile string quartets of the Netherlands. Their blend of world music, combining their own compositions with improvisation, could be defined as folk-fusion. These are strings that will make you move.
The quartet consists of violinists Pablo Rodriguez and George Dumitriu, violist Yanna Pelser and cellist Thomas van Geelen. Apart from their classical background, they share a passion for folk music from South America, Europe and Africa, as well as jazz and improvisation. With the use of innovative playing techniques, they manage to translate these musical worlds to the string quartet. They performed at major festivals and venues in and outside the Netherlands, such as the Concertgebouw, the Bimhuis, de Doelen, Wonderfeel, and Canarias Jazz & Más.
The NSSQ loves to join creative forces with other artists. They made a beautiful program of Brazilian music with singer Lílian Vieira, which has staged at Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Dutch television show Podium Witteman. Their collaboration with American singer and violist Roland Satterwhite took the group to venues in the Netherlands, Germany and Spain and resulted in the Delta Blues inspired EP “Songs for Flying” (2019). With guitarist Javier Infante, they recorded the North-African, Canarian and Sephardic influenced album “Electric Amazigh” (2021) and performed throughout the Netherlands and Spain. Since 2021, the quartet has been performing with the Malian Trio da Kali, who previously recorded their album “Ladilikan” with the Kronos Quartet.
Aside from performing, the members of the quartet attach great value to inspiring the next generation of string players. They have lead multiple workshops on improvisation for young musicians in and outside of the Netherlands and have worked several times with the Canarian youth orchestra Barrios Orquestados. In 2019, together with world renowned jazz violinist and pedagogue Tim Kliphuis, they founded the Academy of Improvising Strings, an annual workshop weekend in the Netherlands, with a first edition especially for teenagers in 2022.
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