Unheard Music Festival 2024: Diversity

Do the performing arts adequately reflect the diversity of the LGBTQIA+ community?" – This is the question at the heart of the eighth edition of the Unheard Music Festival. Because how diverse is the world of classical music really? That's what the members of Matangi are exploring in their own festival. In seeking answers, they examine the past, present, and future. The result is an extensive program featuring moving musical narratives in the form of concerts, an opera, film screenings, workshops, dialogues, and more. Matangi invites fellow musicians and artists including Rick Paul van Mulligen, Sanne Pols, the Natalon Quartet, and Pieter van Loenen.

"Diversity is a major theme in society. Many people feel unseen and unheard. During the Unheard Music Festival 2024, we ask the question of how diversity is represented in classical music; how diverse is classical music on and off the stage? How was it in the past and especially; how do we envision the future?" said Maria-Paula Majoor, first violinist of Matangi. "I am greatly looking forward to performing the opera 'For a Look or a Touch'; it provides a raw look at the history of the queer community in 1933 when Hitler came to power in Germany and subsequently the persecution of these people in all occupied territories. A forgotten history. But it also draws a line to the present. What impact does this history have on the current time?

Program
Saturday, May 4th
3:00 PM Concert - Queer Classical with actor Rick Paul van Mulligen
4:30 PM Film Screening - Paragraph 175 *
6:00 PM Dinner - Matangi's Kitchen
7:00 PM Dialogue - Sanne Pols on diversity in music *
7:30 PM Livestream - National Remembrance on Dam Square *
9:00 PM Opera - 'For a Look or a Touch', as part of Theater after the dam