Liesbeth Esselink

During the course of the summer of 2008, Bart van Poppel and Elisabeth Esselink trekked the numerous rivers, lakes and waterways covering the twelve provinces of the Netherlands by an old motor boat. In each province a different cast of musicians were invited to climb aboard and purely a l'improviste, create a homage to the Dutch landscape. On returning to her home base in Amsterdam, Esselink took the resulting material full of noises, moods, voices and rhythms back to her studio where she set about processing the recordings into twelve separate sound-image com­positions, one for each province. Solex Ahoy, or better still, The Sound Map of the Netherlands is a reflection of the perilous route. A homage to the Dutch waterways. DIARY: Utrecht province Utrecht / THE FOOTBALLPUMPCLARINET OF TEUN HOCKS Utrecht city is great to sail through. Although Amsterdam is famous for its canals, I think some of the canals in Utrecht are much nicer. In Oud Zuilen we met up with Danibal aka Daniel Hentschel who plays the jaw harp. Poor guy, he had to bike a long way to get to us and the weather was awful. I thought he didn't have to carry a lot of stuff but I was wrong. On his bike he'd strapped a suitcase with tons of harps in different keys,... quite amazing! Artist Teun Hocks hopped aboard in Breukelen. Teun is a world famous photographer / painter. In every one of his pieces he's the main character in some kind of absurd situation. Some call them paint-photo's others call them photo-paintings. Although he would never agree with me I think Teun is a multi-instrumentalist. We were a bit late and the later it got, the more amazing instruments he found to load into his car. A tuba, a self made bass guitar in the shape of a palette, a recorder, an accordion, a singing saw and a football-pump-clarinet. He had made the footballpumpclarinet out of the mouthpiece of a clarinet and a football pump. If necessary Teun would be able to get a tune out of a brick. I'm a fan!