Black Pencil is a game changer band with more than a thousand years of music history as their playing field. The possibilities of a huge collection of recorders, pan pipes, viola, accordion and percussion are endless - just like the curiosity and imagination of the five musicians.
With respect, expertise, and refinement, the most beautiful music is lifted from its historical context and presented in a completely fresh light. This is how “melancholic Renaissance melodies can spiral into jazz rock à la Miles Davis” NRC.
Black Pencil initiates the challenge of composing new works and inspires leading Dutch composers such as Roderik de Man, Martijn Padding, Klas Torstensson, Calliope Tsoupaki, Yannis Kyriakides, Aart Strootman, Klaas de Vries, and Kate Moore. From abroad, works are contributed by composers like Wim Henderickx, Moritz Eggert, and emerging composers with a wide range of cultural backgrounds. To date, 450 new pieces have been composed for the ensemble, and it awards several composition prizes.
In 2010 — the year of its founding — Black Pencil gave its debut concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and performed several world premieres at the Istanbul European Capital of Culture. Since then, the ensemble has become a welcome guest in classical venues, as well as on stages and at festivals in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Spain, Ireland, Turkey, Denmark, Indonesia, and Venezuela.
Black Pencil curates its own concert series in Amsterdam and Almere, and collaborates with Land Art Flevoland and Schokland UNESCO World Heritage. Recent projects bring the ensemble together with the worlds of virtual reality, theater, dance, and land art.
Several of their albums have been highly praised by the international press. NRC wrote about La Volta: "The sonic beauty of the original arrangements is delightful." Accordions Worldwide lauded Buffoni: "Beautiful, superlative, and unparalleled!" Regarding the album Come Out, Caioni, Klassik Heute stated: "An immense tonal imagination. So much artistic vision throughout, Black Pencil, with its fiery arrangements, rises above any group. Here, old music becomes something entirely new."
Black Pencil is supported as a legal entity by the Performing Arts Fund NL, the Municipality of Almere, and the Province of Flevoland.
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"Contrasting, diverse, adventurous, grotesque, and surprising" (Opus Klassiek) – surrender yourself to the virtuoso originality of
Jorge Isaac, Matthijs Koene, Esra Pehlivanli, Marko Kassl, and Enric Monfort.