Donemus Webshop — Oorebeek, Christina Viola

Testimony:
__recording one-arm bandits in Las Vegas for “and god invented dice”
__developing new instruments like the soundwheel, plexiphone, the wind-twirler
__making a sound painting of of Tesla plasma lamps in slow motion “Neon Study #1 for Ensemble Modelo62
belong to the work of a composer with a lack of adherence to convention, but who at the same time, cherishes histories and traditions.

Compositions
Visual sources are important inspirations - modernism of the XXe, patterns from and of many cultures. With “Period Point Blank” an hommage to cripwalker Ghost, she embarked on making kinetic collages, and has gone further with ‘experimental imagery’ for her Bowed Electrons Festival Online 2021/2022 Concerts, Cape Town University, S.A.
Her current project is BOOK OF SAMPLES (2021-2023), a series of instrumental works and two linked kinetic collages in which sounds, electronics, and ‘experimental imagery’ play roles in varying combinations. Inspirations are the rippling, striped, very rhythmic textile designs - twenty samples/swatches per page from the Book of Samples of the textile fabric house Fortin, 1825. This swatch book was discovered on archive.org and is in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library in Boston, Massachusetts.
She has composed for and worked with, among others, Nieuw Ensemble, Ivo Janssen, the Marco Blaauw and the Doelen Ensemble, Duo Ebano, Seoul Toy Piano Ensemble, Roadrunner Trio, Ensemble Modelo62, Seoul Toy Piano Ensemble, Phyllis Chen, toy piano, Jellantsje de Vries, violin, Percussion duo Bart de Vrees en Ruud Roelofsen, Tomoko Mukaijama.
Her work has been performed in festivals/concerts in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Finland, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Africa, South Korea, the USA and Canada.
Christina Viola Oorebeek won a prize in the International Dutilleux Concours (1999 ) and at the Gaudeamus Young Composers Workshop( 1997) Netherlands, performed by the Ereprijs.
In 2008, she gave workshops and performances at the Shanghai and Wuhan Conservatories with Joel Ryan and Daniel Schorno (STEIM) and in 2009, performed ‘Streamlines II’ for erhu and live electronics with Ma Jiamun at the Shanghai Electroacoustic Music Week in Shanghai. Oorebeek was guest composer at Sterkfontein Composers Meeting at Nirox, South Africa in 2017, working with the Axelsson-Nilsson Duo (SE) on"Neon Studies #3" for vibraphone and percussion.
She has been a member of the Conlon Foundation since 2000, and Chair since 2012. Conlon was founded in 1999 by Henk Heuvelmans, Luc Houtkamp and Wim de Ruiter with the help of Gaudeamus to further their interest in the development and use of new and existing MIDI-fied acoustic musical instruments. Many Residencies and Competitions were held, often in collaboration with Gaudeamus. In 2023, the Conlon Foundation has been transformed into the Conlon Collective consisting of composers and sound artists, Daniel Schorno, Boris Bezemer, Roché Tiddens and herself.
After a chequered period of dance and acting studies in L.A., she found her first true love in bebop and blues piano. An American-Dutch composer who left the US in '69 after singing in Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, she was briefly a singer-songwriter in London, long a dance musician and 'rhythm for dance' teacher at the University of the Arts in Amsterdam. While studying piano with Willem Brons at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, she truly 'heard' new music for the first time and fell in love again, but now, for real! In due course, she embarked on a career in composition at 50, studying with Klaas de Vries at CodArts Rotterdam and graduated with the Composition Prize. Masterclasses were followed with, Magnus Lindberg, Richard Rijnvos and Toshio Hosokawa.
Her education in electroacoustic music was supported by many residences at STEIM in Amsterdam. A new interest in microtonality was explored in two works for the Huygens-Fokker 31 tone organ, Muziekgebouw ah Ij, Amsterdam.
And, the learning continues__making audiovisual compositions as a ‘primitive artist’ is a new love.