Atlas Festival & Orchestra

'I see before me a great multitude of players from all corners of the world with all different instruments, a huge range of colors and cultures coming to sound in various formations and entering into unprecedented relationships with each other. It will be a motley assemblage of musicians where new sound perspectives and "musical multi languages" are possible. The forms of music that can arise with this unique company range from solo to chamber musical to orchestral in an unheard of kaleidoscopic variety. A new music in short.'

'Atlas wants to cherish the achievements of art music from various cultures while breaking new ground. Composers and musicians can benefit from these riches and arrive at unsuspected and dreamed-of combinations: in timbre, in musical form, in expression, in playing methods, and so on. The newness in this is not in inventing, but in finding: bringing together elements that have not been combined into one before. That is precisely where I believe the future lies: in synthesis.'

In 2019, Joël Bons received the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.

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Based on the conviction that the future of art music lies primarily in the mutual influence and convergence of different musical cultures, composer Joël Bons started the Atlas Ensemble in 2002. Set up as an experimental collective for (young) composers, Atlas developed over the years into a full-fledged ensemble, for which Bons wrote Nomaden * in 2016. For that work, he won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, the "Nobel Prize for music," in 2019.

After the Atlas Ensemble had to cease its activities at the end of that year due to a subsidy freeze, Oranjewoud Festival provided a restart. In a groundbreaking, multi-year development project that included three composition commissions for Joël Bons, they worked toward the Atlas Orchestra. The audience is taken by the hand on a musical voyage of discovery.

*commissioned by Cello Biennale Amsterdam

Online information about Atlas and demonstration videos can be found at:

Website Atlas

YouTube Atlas

'(...) at the Oranjewoud Festival on the border of May and June, the Netherlands still seemed the promised land for outdoor explorations. The premiere of Aart Strootman's Waterworks took place in a swimming pool, where the audience could experience a dialogue between tubular bells and water in the bath. The Atlas Ensemble, a collection of nationalities and instruments from the Netherlands to China, played the fantastically monumental 132 Guan by Joël Bons there under the direction of Ed Spanjaard.

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