Sytze Pruiksma

Sytze Pruiksma is a composer, sound artist and bird watcher. Since 2008 he combines his love for birds and landscape with the music he makes. As a soloist but also in projects together with poets, dancers, video artists and scientists like Theunis Piersma he gives voice to the landscape he cares about and worries about.

Sytze was traditionally educated as a classical percussionist at the conservatory of Amsterdam. After having played in e.g. the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra, he focused on his own projects, developing an authentic way of playing that is characterized by a great attention for timbre, inspired on landscapes, nature and birds. Resulting in 2008 in his first solo project LÂN (land), in which he translated these fascinations into film and music. It was performed at several festivals in The Netherlands and in New York on the New Island Festival. The successor of this project will be made in 2018 when Leeuwarden is European Capital of Culture. Within this program Sytze will make his own version of ‘Conference of the Birds’ with Club Guy & Roni (dance) and 2000 amateur brass musicians.

Beside his solo projects he collaborates with visual artists, filmmakers, poets, architects and scientists. Together with Theunis Piersma he developed in 2011 the program ‘Music of Migration’ about global bird migration, which they performed over the years in China (WWF), Sweden and The Netherlands. In 2017 their new program ‘TRACKS’ had its premiere at the Oerol Festival on Terschelling (see photographs and the TeamPiersma Science and Arts page).

Website: www.sytzepruiksma.com.

Profile image and below: René den Engelsman.