"Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough."
— Emily Dickinson
A blank page, a fresh start. With every project, Anne Vanschothorst returns to the beginner's mind: unknowing, curious, open to experiment and discovery. This is her inner landscape, where sound, image, and poetry serve as source material. Their boundaries feel arbitrary; a deeper logic compels Anne to dissolve them, allowing the auditory to become tactile and spatial, the textual embodied, and the visual audible.
Anne is an artist with a harp.
She lives in wonder and wandering.
Composing is an intuitive act that is grounded in silence. Nature provides the outer landscape for attentive listening and alignment. She strays from the path as she’s creating it, curious about what association, disruption, or chaos might reveal. The harp is a playful companion, urging her to find the work’s equilibrium. She perceives her instrument as being made with strings of clay. What takes shape is a sculpture moulded out of music, unfolding as it extends through other media.
There is a rightness about the work’s suggestive textures and structures. Its value lies in what it stirs within the beholder. Slow your pace; walk between the notes. Breathe, reflect: how does it speak to you?
Anne declares:
"I am with the Poet, fundamentally touched and irrevocably transformed by the significance of what defies definition and what I myself cannot express in words. I am with Antjie Krog – she who sounds and breathes poetry… she, who moves me deeply."
Other sources of inspiration include fellow musicians, visual artists, photographers, animators, filmmakers, authors, poets, spoken word artists, and sculptural thinkers.
Her process yields recording albums, analogue and digital soundscapes, audiovisual works, and installations that live their own lives in the spaciousness of both the physical and streaming worlds. Museums such as Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam have commissioned compositions and audio recordings, and her video art has been presented and awarded at international poetry and film festivals. Installations include Still Life by poet Antjie Krog and visual artist Bronwyn Lace, for which Anne provided the composition and audio recording. It was exhibited and co-curated by William Kentridge and Phala Ookeditse Phala at The Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg.
Believing that a work continues its journey through those who receive it, Anne is grateful to see her compositions being carried forward by other musicians, notably pianist Jeroen van Vliet and harpist Josh Layne. Her recordings have been remixed by many, and these reinventions sometimes become new seeds for Anne’s own experiments.
In her ongoing research project Das Harfenklangbuch, Anne constructs an atlas in which the pre-verbal materializes into language — it is the place she lives. Not everything that takes form is sculptural; only what is composed. The work traces intersections between matter and resonance. It moves between the organic and the configured. It pendulates between private ritual and public space, mapping the fault lines from which constellations arise. Music and soundscapes find their own sense of time, an interval where imagination comes into play.
"I am rooted, but I flow." — Virginia Woolf
Text: Green Room Creatives
Anne Vanschothorst — CV (Highlights)
2012 Audio recordings licensed to date via Parma Licensing (used by Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, TLC, Innocent Creep – Tropfest NY, GUCCI).
2013 Video recordings licensed to date for international broadcast on Brava / DJAZZ.tv (now Stingray Classica and Stingray DJAZZ).
2014 Release of EK IS EIK (I Am Oak), on Big Round Records.
2015 Composition and audio recording for Living River, a nature documentary by Ruben Smit, screened in cinemas and broadcast on national Dutch television.
2016 Composer/sonic artist, 60x60 (Vox Novus; concept Robert Voisey): works released on CD/digital and featured internationally; performed 350+ times in 30+ countries, incl. Winter Garden Atrium (NYC), Stratford Circus (2012 London Olympics), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; building on 60x60 Dance (ft. Bell & Golfieri duo) & Video Art collaborations (2007–2016).
2017 Release of Beautiful World, music for multimedia.
2018 Composition and harp recording for art pieces by Kandinsky and Degas for Boijmans Art Rocks,
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
2019 Composition and audio recording for Une vie de Renarde, a nature documentary by Ana Santos for Ateles Films, broadcast among others on national French Television channel FRANCE 5.
2020 Release of klip lied snaar, an Afrikaans–Dutch book and CD collaboration with poet Antjie Krog.
2021 Composition and audio recording for Still Life, an installation with a poem by Antjie Krog and a sculptural video by visual artist Bronwyn Lace. Exhibited and co-curated by William Kentridge and Phala Ookeditse Phala at The Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, South Africa.
2022 Pater Noster, a harPoetry movie featuring Antjie Krog, selected, screened, and discussed in the virtual listening room during the International Alliance for Women in Music Conference.
2022 Composition, audio recording and production of Transparant van die tongvis / Transparency of the Sole, animated poetry by visual artist Diek Grobler, written and read in Afrikaans by poet Antjie Krog. Official selection Zebra Film Festival in 2022 at the Haus für Poesie, Berlin. Participant in the PoetryFilmTage,
2023 Weimar, and touring the Dutch film theatres in 2024, initiated by the Dutch Poetry Film Festival.
2022 Composition and audio recording for a poetic pamphlet by Marion Bloem, presented at the exhibition of Fiona Tan at EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
2023 Release of That I Did Always Love, an Emily Dickinson-inspired harp soundscape with poems narrated by Annie Einan, on PARMA Recordings.
2024 Composition, audio recording and production for I hav’nt told my garden yet, a pin screen animation by visual artist Diek Grobler. Screened at major international film festivals, it has received the prestigious NPF Award at the Dutch Poetry Film Festival.
2025 Served as a juror for the Dutch Poetry Film Festival Competition.
2026 Her Innerview (short film, dir. Erica Baltimore, 2014; NFF 2014) — Composition & audio recording. Screened at the 55th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), 2026.
— Collaborations (A selection)
Museums: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Museon, Museum Jan Cunen, EYE filmmuseum, Bonn Landes Museum, Royal Academy of Arts London, Saatchi Gallery
Festivals: TROPFEST New York, Zebra Poetry Film Festival Berlin, Odense International Film Festival, Nederlands Film Festival, Go Short, Crossing Border Festival
Studios: Studio Drift, Dutch Igloo, Studio Joost Grootens
Visual artists: Bronwyn Lace, Christian Thompson, Erica Baltimore, Ana Santos, Dan Carabas, Michele Turriani
Animators: Diek Grobler, Joost II Sickenga, Aimée de Jongh
Illustrators: Sylvia Weve, Harriet van Reek, Willem Samuel
Authors: Antjie Krog, Diana Ferrus, Marion Bloem, Anne Vegter, Jan Eijkelboom
Musicians: Jeroen van Vliet, Maarten Vos, Sven Figee, Michael Moore, Saskia Laroo, Arthur Bont, Rebecca Sier, Bob van Luijt, Jasper Somsen, Jan Willem Troost, Ernst Stolz, Roland Kuit, Robert Voisey, Anna Heller
— Interviews & Discussions (A selection)
NPO Radio Klassiek: Hollandse Nieuwe with Lex Bohlmeijer, on life, landscapes & poetry (Antjie Krog, Joke Hermsen)
BNN/VARA: Keihard klassiek with Jan van Poppel, on work in general, Emily Dickinson
Concertzender: with Evert-Jan Nagtegaal on poetry, new music
Luister Magazine: with Karen Duking on life, inspiration, cross-over productions
Omrop Fryslân: with Willem Waldpyk on the composition process, marketing/pr, new music
Den Haag Centraal: with Hans Willink on life, music, composition process, Graham Norton
John Buijsman’s talk show: a conversation on health, harp, poetry and being a finalist at the Art Rocks! contest
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen: Brief Artist Talk + Q&A: A Sonic Translation of Wassily Kandinsky’s Lyrisches
Nederlands Poëziefilm Festival: Jury Member together with Vicky Francken, Jules van Hulst and Raj Mohan
International Alliance for Women in Music Conference: Panellist, discussing my presented works
— Press Quotes (A selection)
"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
"The wonderful minimalist and subtle film music is striking."
— Volkskrant
"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
"It is precisely this sensitivity, the eye and ear for the smallest vibrations, that has made it possible for this
great team to create a new work of art that clarifies, transcends and is equally universal, based on this
classic and ever-current poem by Emily Dickinson."
— Jury Dutch Poetryfilm Festival on giving the NPF Award to I hav’nt told my garden yet
♫♡
Living in language and held by her garden, Anne plays in her studio, where work takes shape through harp and soul amid the green surroundings of The Hague, the Netherlands.
Connect
You Play i listen !
Through your hands and listening, the music unfolds, exact and never the same. Share your interpretation if you like. It means the world to me when other harpists, musicians, and artists bring my compositions to life. Through arrangements, transcriptions, remixes, or by weaving the music into dance, theatre, or spoken word, you carry it to new audiences. Feel free to send me your audio or video, I’d be happy to share it on my SoundCloud and YouTube playlists. Please don’t hesitate to improvise, arrange, or reimagine the music to make it your own, I truly admire creative exploration. The notated harp works (.PDFs and music books) are published by Inge Frimout - frimoutmusic.com.
To enter my inner landscape, I live by ten phrases that open onto imagination and connection, each inviting you to take them, play with them, translate them — and make them your own.
1. Unknow
2. To frame is to unbound
3. No sound without silence
4. Be a Cat
5. Give voice. Exist.
6. Embody
7. Be a Tree
8. Language is material
9. Time dissolves
10. Be a Bird
-AV