Anne Vanschothorst

“Many of the miniatures remind me of Erik Satie — not that her music is in his style, but that both composers so thoroughly explore an artfully restricted sonic universe — in which chords and single melodic lines appear in alternation and at a pace slow enough to experience them almost as if they were sounding sculptures.”  – American Record Guide

Anne Vanschothorst (The Netherlands) is a landscape music composer, minimal harp pioneer, and multimedia artist exploring creativity in applied music, film, and spoken word — using overdub and making sound sculptures with 47 strings. She received international critical acclaim as an indie composer and producer who records sound on sound stilled mystical landscape music for in-a-room, film, multimedia, and spoken word. This new poetic and inventive, edgy sonic universe next to the existing harp planet and music world, indicates that Vanschothorst walks off the beaten track. The written note-scores are frequently performed by international musicians and added to their repertoire. The “You Play I listen!” platform is an ongoing creativity project that was initiated to share Harp and Soul Music performed by others via videos and sound-clouds.

“Anne’s magic gives us a weird sonorous world with bizarre fauna and flora through poetic imagination.” –  Klassiek Centraal

In 2014, she released EK IS EIK (i am oak) on Big Round Records, an album that would receive critical acclaim on an international scale. For the indie label harp and soul she has recorded the Beautiful World project (2017), music for multimedia. The album harPoetry (Dutch/Afrikaans) klip lied snaar: voordrag van gedigte en harpmusiek ft. Antjie Krog became tangible as a book and CD. 

“There is a stunning soundtrack quality to Anne Vanschothorst’s music, but that should be no surprise as she has been called upon to provide such to the visual arts.” – All About Jazz

Remarkable people, teachers from then and now, heartfelt music, and (outspoken) poetry, visual art, awesome nature, and daily (seemingly innocent) impressions are Vanschothorst’s main inspiration to make music and visuals. The moving pictures (harp and soul scapes) are co-produced with photographer and cameraman Pjotr van Schothorst. The landscape music videos are broadcasted on several Stingray tv channels. Audio productions are heard in a cinema-movie and national television nature-doc, Living River, (Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, TLC), and an award winning short film Innocent Creep, featured at Tropfest New York and a GUCCI infomercial. 

Vanschothorst was commissioned to compose and record music for the Dutch museum Boijmans van Beuningen. The sculptural video and sound installation “Still Life” by Bronwyn Lace, Antjie Krog, and Vanschothorst was an online collaboration exhibited and co-curated by artist William Kentridge and Animateur Phala Ookeditse Phala during Season 7 – 2021 at ”the centre for the less good idea” in Johannesburg (South Africa). Diek Grobler, visual artist and animator, transformed the “harp and soul” production transparant van die tongvis, written and read in Afrikaans by Antjie Krog and translated into English by Denis Hirson, into animated poetry screened at international film festivals. The ”Pater Noster” harPoetry movie was selected, screened, and talked about in the virtual listening room during the International Alliance for Women in Music conference 2022. 

Vanschothorst is a member of LandscapeMusic.org, a network of musical artists that have the mission to deepen public appreciation of the natural world by providing a platform for contemporary composers and performers whose music engages with landscape, nature, and place.