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I learned to play music as children learn to talk

After two years of music academy most students are dead

I’m interested in the meeting point of so called ‘low’ and ‘high’ culture

For tango people, my music might be too rocky, too groovy

Who meets Tjerk (1970) gets a firm handshake and an assuredly and at the
same time open greeting. ‘Mister Van der Ham, pleased to meet you’. He’s a
versatile man: musician, willingly playing on his keyboard or his handbuilt
Italian vibrandoneon, but also coaching teambuilding sessions in private
companies.
How does his musical life look like, and what is in his mind? A mind that
lead to his working it all out, being with in his Mental Chamber Orchestra
on the main stage of the 11th edition of the INTERZONE FESTIVAL.
“It isn’t easy to keep some sense of naivity and, at the same time, to be
completely aware of what you are doing.”

by Morries Leeraert

A magic discovery
“In my childhood music was all around. My parents were not professionally
involved in music, but still it was a common thing, self-evidently present. We
had a few instruments in the house, but especially I remember the singing after
our dinner. Chants from the church-songbook, psalms especially. Everybody can
sing!, I found out. Quite a big discovery as a child.
“We had an organ at home and when I was three years old, I stroke a few keys.
It was a magic sound. It was completely magic. Now I know it was a major
accord, but back then, as a three year old, it meant to me the difference
between chaos and harmony. And there was another magic thing, a darker one:
the sound was there, I heard it, and then it was gone. I was afraid to forget it.
So I continued to touch the keys. That’s how the organ and later the keyboard
came into my life.
“Music became for me an everyday sphere; I learned to play it as children learn
to talk. It nested in me as a nice feeling, but also a usual, common thing. We
are not very surprised when we hear somebody talk. In the same way I played,
nothing special.
“So from then it were the church songs and classical music. Around ten, I found
out how to add a groove to all this, due to my going around with the ‘wrong

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pals’. I listened to Queen, a popband whose songs contain a lot of classical
harmonies. Later came The Police, Joe Jackson and one of the best Dutch pop
bands The Nits. Melodic enough to be pop, excentric enough to be new.
“I studied psychology, about one and a half year, a great study. But actually I
found myself writing songs most of the time. I had a drum computer and out of
it my first compositions came into being. I recognized that about me it’s about
music. So, yeah, there it is: Tjerk went to the music academy.”

Survival of the non-fitting

“The music academy, the conservatory – the name says it all: it wants you to
make a good musician but the approach is essentially conservative. Let me put
it this way: it doesn’t make one easy do keep the musical magic I experienced.
“After two years of consovatoire most students are dead. Dead in a musical
sense. They played themselves to death by the strong emphasis on technique,
forgot their sources, their inner motivation why they played that instrument at
all. I must say, it isn’t easy either, almost impossible, to keep some sense of
naivity and, at the same time, to be completely aware of what you are doing.
In one way to learn new techniques and to follow the teachers, and in the
other way to behold one’s own resourcefullness. In my time on the academy, it
was trend to understand composition as a construction or a deconstruction. I,
as a musician, were too romantic, too much Chopin-like.
“But somehow I survived. The music that I make is still coming from some kind
of personal source.”

Mozart, the pop star

“My own music I would define as cross over, an ecclectical mix of world music,
pop and improvisation.
“I made an earlier project, called LoTeQ. The idea was to make techno music
on a low tech manner; that means techno music on an acoustical sound palet.
It’s a hard damn thing to play techno on a guitar and organ.
I’m very interested in the meeting point –or encounter, if you like- of so called
‘low culture’ and so called ‘high culture’. Mozart, in his time, wrote melodies
that we would now call big hits, bestsellers in music. I mean, his songs were
whistled by the bakery boy on the street. Now we call this classical music,
we’re full of awe to pay respect to this Big Thing, but, well, it used to be very
popular. In question of ‘common taste’, I think people mistake classical for
tradition.
“The other way round happened with tango. It was dance music, played in the
early days in brothels and slums and on the street. It was thought of as shit
music. But somehow it became classical. Piazolla, especially, made that cross
over. Tango is at the same time juicy and intelligent, very hard to classify.
In my compositions with the Mental Chamber Orchestra the flamenco and
tango inspiration will go its way into classical instruments and the
temperament of the people playing it. The flamenco will flow into the piano
and the violincello, and not, as usual, in guitar.

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“That’s how it is cross over. It’s crossing over culure, over instruments and
over time. As for the arrangement, it is as mingling oil and water, as making a
mayonaise. You know, it’s a mix of recipe and the hand that takes the mixing
spoon.”

Happily emotional
“Emotion and rationality get their place in my musical vocabulaire. I think
people can recognize the techniques of harmony and dissent, but also the
sentiment of tango. But I can imagine that for tango people, it will be ‘too
rude’, too rocky, too much groovy.
“It’s interesting to compare the audience’s reaction to my music. In Holland
and Belgium people say ‘hmm, it’s interesting, surprising, creative’. In Italy,
where I also played, the audience listens a lot more emotionally. Actually, in
Serbia I expect something passionate like that: an emotional ear listening (and
dancing) and me giving myself in being shamelessly lyrical.”

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Mental Chamber Orchestra
The Mental Chamber Orchestra will present on the INTERZONE FESTIVAL how
classical music sounds groovy. How it succeeds in making the combination of
the power of academic composition techniques and the personal amalgam of
improvisation and melodic ideas.
Catching the passions of flamenco and tango, the grooves of 20th century rock
music and funk, composer Tjerk van der Ham conmingled these passions into
the time and space of improvised music. In the compositions which we’ll hear
at THE INTERZONE FESTIVAL the individual qualities of the three musicians will not be
spared. Music is personal. Sarah Walder’s playing the violincello springs from
her ensemble culture and Old Music, Tessa Zoutendijk will occupy the Mental
Chamber from her bravoure and outlook on folk and jazz, and Tjerk’s rythmic
driving force – as a trio of tango dancers – holding each other –and the audience
– as tight and free as tango dancers.
Tjerk characterizes it as chamber music with the noise of an orchestra. “It is as
with a small cast of three people you play as with a bigger band. Like with two
guitars, bass and drums a band can achieve a bombastic effect.
But, we’re not just orchestral, we also ‘mental’, which means surprising,
strange, pleasantly crazy. The name sounds like a renowned orchestra, and we
are like some renowned orchestra from the lunatic asylum.
Listen at: www.myspace.com/mentalchamberorchestra#ixzz0z3q2AEf5

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Mother of Grace
Lyrics: Tjerk van der Ham

Of steel and stone

her fists were made
hands to hit- hands to love
and of no one afraid
face distorted by the wind
eyes as sharp as a knife
we were bound to be together
she was meant to be my wife

Still see her coming

laundrybasket at her side
and the seagulls, and their shrieks!
but it was just I who was worthy
to receive that strong look above those high cheekbones
“You have to fight me” she said
and, oh! I’ve fought,
for months, years, it’s been ages
but we were bound to be together
she was destined to be my wife

Let us remember the soul of Hanna Marina Lucia

wife of the man with the furrows om his face
Let us pray for the soul of Hanna Marina Lucia
while mother of mothers, still the mother of grace

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Mental Chamber Orchestra

Tjerk van der Ham: compositions, piano, vibrandoneon, voice

Sarah Walder: violoncello, voice
Tessa Zoutendijk: violin, voice Band Members

www.myspace.com/mentalchamberorchestra#ixzz0yMnmpKk2

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