The Netherlands Wind Ensemble

The Nederlands Blazers Ensemble (NBE) is formed by solo players of the most important orchestras of the Netherlands such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, The Residentie Orchestra, and the Radio orchestra's. They meet up around eighty times per year to perform special programmes both in the Netherlands and abroad.
The ensemble is famous for its high level of performance and its unique and adventurous programming. The ensemble creates music theatre events for the concert hall. Categorisations such as ‘classical’ or ‘contemporary’ are too narrow for their programmes, but one element they all share is a sense of the theatrical. In the past years, the NBE has created and performed programmes focusing on composers and soloists like Kevin Volans, Roger Doyle, Alexander Raskatov, Guido Morini, Luca Francesconi, Cornelis de Bondt , Theo Loevendie , Guus Janssen , John Psathas, Maarten Altena , Martijn Padding , Askell Masson, Ayub Ogada, Iva Bittova, the Pokrovsky Ensemble, the Hilliard Ensemble, Marco Beasley, Manos Achalinotopoulos, Voces Thules and Jordi Savall. In addition, the NBE stages programmes like Mail from Mozart, which alternates the seven parts of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’ with readings from his letters to his father; Schumann’s Diary, which tells the story of Schumann’s deteriorating mental health through passages from his diary and The Creation, which takes as its point of departure an 18th century version of Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung framed in an updated Creation myth by Flemish author and Bart Moeyaert. In the Mozart year 2006, the NBE has staged Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte and Cosi fan Tutti as a trio of original chamber operas performed on period instruments and featuring the voices of soprano Johannette Zomer, tenor Bernard Loonen and baritone Frans Fiselier.
Taking the NBE’s sense of adventure to new heights year after year is the traditional New Year’s Concert, broadcast live on television from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on new year’s day. The NBE has performed around the world and makes two international concert tours per year.
The NBE has its own record label, NBELIVE, which releases two or three live recordings of special NBE projects per year “for those who were there…and those who wished they had been.”