Douwe Eisenga











What does music mean to you personally?

Music is an addiction. I need my daily shots of grooves and rhythms. The recognition of rhythm & repetition is centered in the oldest parts of our brain. The reception of music is almost entirely physical for me.

Do you agree that music is all about fantasy?

It might start with fantasy, with an idea that pops-up suddenly. But that idea is most of the time a bar or a few bars. Good music is also (for the most part) about structure, balance: each and every note on exactly the right place.


I would have been teacher, teaching history or something, working with young people.


I don’t write classical music. My music is a sort of mix of Minimal, Rock and Baroque. It’s for a generation that grew up with pop and rock and happily jump from Purcell to Radiohead, from Bach to the Stones.


In the last few decades a lot of composers have reconnected with their audience again. Writing music that is able to communicate. The area of hard-boiled avant-garde was necessary and we learned a lot of usable compositions-techniques from that period. But now it’s time for new music that is fresh and can be understand by the audience without having a degree in music theory.


The interest in the standard iron classical repertoire is declining, replaced by an interest in a mix of genres and that’s a good thing. It’s all about good music. Can be Bach, Stravinsky, Steve Reich, Arcade Fire, Balkan Beats or Indian raga’s.


Creativity isn’t the sole property of musicians, writers or composers. Everyone has to be creative, dealing with daily regular life. And as in normal life, creativity is fueled by restrictions, in my case, following strict musical processes to build large musical structures.


If you musicians stop playing over and over the musical language of two hundreds years ago and start promoting fresh and new music, your audience will change. Novels from ages ago are hardly read and no one complains. Why this focus on the standard classical evergreens? Let the interest in music develop as it is developing. There’s only one thing that is extremely important: musical education for kids and young adults. In the Netherlands schools are neglecting the importance of music more and more. Local music schools are closed. That’s a very bad thing. Playing a musical instrument, learning rhythms, playing together, enjoying new music (and again Balkan Folk Music isn’t a ‘lower’ genre than tunes from Bach), that all is so important for the development of young brains!


My favorite piece is almost always my latest piece. There’s no recipe for starting. I have a big box with compositional tools, which can be used all in different combination. Composing for me is serious business, a strange sort of mix between cerebral work and physical response. The music is highly structured but at the same time has to give me goose bumps or force me to jump & dance like a madman.


I love writing for theater, film or dance, although I hardly initiate these kinds of projects my self.


Music has always been in the business. Bach was paid by the church, Haydn by the Esterházy’s. I had long talks with Philip Glass on several occasions and he loves the business part of being a composer. Business is also fun and perhaps demands for more creativity than the music it self.

What projects are coming up?

Next two big things (besides the remaking of the dance performance Wiek) is the live concert with the complete Music for Wiek with seven percussion players and 4 saxophone players and the premiere of large-scale The Wall Symphony, a symphony inspired by some bits of Pink Floyd’s epic album The Wall.