Debra Richards: Hello, my name is Debra Richards, I'm a music journalist and broadcaster based in the UK. You're listening to the podcast Rebel Spirits, offering a unique insight into the progressive and innovative talents of Polish jazz. Season three interviews musicians that have decided to connect across countries and cultures, initiating unique musical projects. And today on the show, you will hear from Paweł Szamburski, Judith Steenbrink and Tomasz Pokrzywiński. This is a collaboration that has come into existence through a mutual feeling for music from a bygone era. It is best not to specify exactly, but this particular ensemble of the Bastarda Trio with the Dutch orchestra Holland Baroque focuses on ideas, gestures and dynamics from early music, say from the Middle Ages through to Baroque. But as violinist Judith Steenrbrink of Holland Baroque says this music is of the now, it's contemporary. And that's clear when listening to the track that follows the interview. What is also clear is the belief in the sound they are creating together. There's theoretics, the heart with which they play and the impact it can have on a listener and on themselves as musicians. As a starting point they look toward the 13th century mystique Hadewijch from Brabant in the Netherlands, who wrote a form of love poetry, love defined in its widest and most imaginative sense. And in fact, the title of the project Minne relates to Verminnen which means to love in Dutch. They speak of the incentives for their creativity, but ultimately the music they compose, improvise and arrange has the strongest voice and you will hear the peace Gaude it immediately and with great clarity expresses the passion each musician has for a music that powerfully and elegantly weaves the past with the present.
Paweł Szamburski: Hi, I'm Paweł Szamburski. I'm a musician and clarinettist in Bastarda trio.
Judith Steenbrink: Hello, my name is Judith Steenbrink. I am part of the artistic team of Holland Baroque together with my twin sister Tineke Steenbrink. My instrument is the violin.
Tomasz Pokrzywiński: My name is Tomasz Pokrzywiński. I'm the cellist of Bastarda trio, and Holland Baroque.
Paweł Szamburski: The thing that brought together the two ensembles, Bastarda and Holland Baroque is the fact that we like to look at the music composed several centuries ago. We like to be inspired by old sounds.
Judith Steenbrink: We know Tomek Pokrzywiński as our complete hero cellist, he plays with us for a long time. And of course, we knew that he's also playing in the Bastarda trio, an improvising trio, whose fascination for the Middle Ages is unusual. And for us it is very interesting.
Paweł Szamburski: We were invited by Holland Baroque for this project because Judith and Tinekje, two sisters, siblings, listened to the Ars Moriendi album, I think, from Bastarda, because Thomas, of course, introduced our music to Judith once. And she called him and she said, Thomas, this is the most beautiful music I've listened to for years now. And can we do something together? And so this was basically the very human and very natural way of meeting and the best way possible, because she just liked our music and she decided to work with us.
So the story of a Minne project is about medieval, also medieval times, but the source of our compositions and our work is mostly literature made by Hadewijch of Brabant.
Judith Steenbrink: Inspiration for the beginning idea is a mystique from the middle ages, from Brabant, that's a region where my sister and I where we actually grew up having we lift more south than we were growing up. But I want is actually in Provence, which now covers parts of Belgium and Holland. Hadewijch was a mystique, which you can maybe compare with the very well known mystique, Hildegard von Bingen. She was in a monastery, she wrote very interesting texts in old Dutch, very poetic, she wrote, and in that time, that was normal. Let's say she wrote poetry, but also visions. And from these texts, because there is no written music from her left, we wanted to make, let's say, to have the ideas of her texts, making two sounding music. To be honest and clear, the texts are incredibly complicated. I listen to podcasts of people who studied and who would like to tell a specialist for text to try to understand because it's, well, first of all, is an old Dutch, but it's very spiritual. And she plays with the language in a way that it's very hard to understand. It's maybe not a very nice way to say it, but the gray area between sensuality and spirituality is like a life study in itself. But it's a very interesting area to also create music on.
Paweł Szamburski: Minne, it basically means love, but the love concept of Hadewijch was very broad and intense. It was love for God. And also for nature. It was so deep and kind of almost as intense as erotic experience. And she described it like she had these visions of nature and loving God in the same way. So this was the starting point for us. For Judith Steenbrink and for Bastarda to invent the whole idea and how we can talk about it, combining two languages of these two different but similar bands. At the beginning, it was mostly Judith, because Judith composed a lot of music for the Minne project, and she arranged violin voices and also harmonies and everything. And we came with our own ideas. We've our own bass lines, I was mostly developed for the improvised sections and just freestyle. And Thomas was also a kind of a composer and the collaborator who joined these two languages because he knew the Bastarda language and this unique approach. And he also knows very well how Holland Baroque works. Immediately we developed languages that correspond to each other. We had some troubles of course, but it was a very creative process for me. A lot of, a lot of learning, a lot of working like in a different way when I'm used to it. But also I think for Holland Baroque, it was a nice adventure and new way of thinking because, for me, the music is mostly about social connection and music is about humans and about people.
Judith Steenbrink: Minne was recorded in Vredenburg. That's a concert hall in Utrecht. It was in the COVID times, the concert hall was closed. And they said, Do you want to? Do you want to come here and record, which we did. So that was a special gift because it's a beautiful, huge, concert hall concert place. And they just offered us the hall and we could record there, it was very special. That's one of the reasons why this album could be there in the first place.
Hadwijch, Minne, was the starting point of this album, but then, in the end, we play, we play in the sense of children play, you know, we play with our fantasy, we play with two ensembles meeting, we play with the acoustic. So yes, it is music from hundreds of years ago and yet it doesn't sound to me like that. It doesn't feel to me like that. The music I play for me, speaks to me now. And it feels like music that has a meaning. Now.
Paweł Szamburski: Holland Baroque, what they're doing, they're doing basically, almost the same thing with the music with early music periods as we do here, they're also changing the border of reception. And they really sell the product in a way that is very contemporary, very, very now. Up to date. They're really trying to push the border more, more young people to get involved and different audiences and students and so on and so on.
Judith Steenbrink: Our music is not always what we call of the cannon. It's a travel that we've done for many years. And yeah, is it easy or not? It's just the way we're going. And we open doors to do repertoire that nobody's heard before since the 18th century, we created new programmes that have new music or, or that have combinations that never sounded before. So it's just the way that we go musically through life. And it's what keeps us going. And if it's difficult or successful or it's not something you ask yourself every day because this is our this is what we need to do. This is why we are here.
Paweł Szamburski: My name is Paweł Szamburski and you are listening to Gaude from Minne album.
Debra Richards: This episode of Rebel Spirits was hosted by Debra Richards and produced by Magdalena Stępień, Monica Proba and Wojciech Oleksiak. The podcast was brought to you by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. If you'd like to listen to more music from today's featured artist, please see the show notes for this episode, or go to culture.pl/rebelspirits. Please do subscribe to Rebel Spirits wherever you get your podcasts and we'd be happy for you to share it. It's been such a pleasure and I look forward to being with you again.