Firgun Ensemble & Koi Collective
Biography Firgun Ensemble & Koi Collective
The Firgun Ensemble
is an ensemble consisting of Jeroen Vrancken (clarinet), Ludovic Bataillie (violin), Ciska Vandelanotte (violin), Audinga Musteikyté (viola) and Karin Broeckhove Ibarra (cello). They specialise in repertoire written for clarinet and string quartet. The ensemble was formed in spring 2017 from students, but mostly friends, of the Royal Conservatories of Antwerp and Brussels. After intensive coaching with, among others, Gilles Millet (Danel quartet), Amy Norrington (Oxalys), Tony Nys (Malibran Quartet), Erik Schumann (Schumann Quartet), Wouter Vossen (Storioni Trio), Karel Steylaerts (Trio Fenix) and Nicola Boud, they are currently specialising at the Dutch String Quartet Academy (NSKA) in Amsterdam and the Orpheus Institute in Ghent.
The Firgun Ensemble has won several international awards: In January 2018, they wrote down the first prize of the Dutch Storioni Willem Twee Concours, along with the audience prize. To crown this, they were invited by NPO Radio 4 to make their radio debut from the Spiegelzaal of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
In 2022, Firgun won the Supernova competition in their home country, organised by the Klara Festival. As a result, they toured numerous Belgian chamber music venues in the '22-'23 season. In January 2024, they recorded a CD in collaboration with Klara and Kunstenpunt for the Fingerprints project. This involved asking Belgian composers to write a short work, a fingerprint, for the ensemble. The final result can be heard soon!
Meanwhile, they are a welcome guest on numerous international stages. They have already performed at the prestigious Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam, the Arte Amanti Festival and the NJO Muziekzomer. They played recitals in Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, the Toonzaal 's Hertogenbosch, Podium Klassiek Eindhoven, De Singel in Antwerp and the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels. Furthermore, they have already been heard on Klara, Musiq'3 and NPO Radio 4. The Firgun Ensemble is affiliated with the Dutch organisation Kunst in de Kamer.
'Firgun' is an untranslatable word from Hebrew and means as much as: 'To be happy for the good fortune of another'.
Koi Collective
From an ensemble that named itself after a brightly coloured fish, you might have some expectations about the colour of their sound. Fortunately, as the Koi Collective, Emmy Wils (piano) and Maarten Vergauwen (saxophone) meet all expectations. Although tonight’s programme consists entirely of young Belgian composers, the music is more colourful than the black, yellow and red flag. Some of them, such as Frederik Neyrinck and Jean-Luc Fafchamps, have not yet finished their exams. The others on the list, such as Ward De Jonge who has just graduated from the composition course at KASK & Conservatorium, make this a real 1990s evening – as their dates of birth indicate!
