HOW DOES OUR MUSIC SOUND?
NON-INSTAGRAMMABLE
NOT COLOR COORDINATED
NOT GYM READY
(sometimes not in tune)
(sometimes not concert ready)
↓ (sometimes not) ↓
As 👑Winston Churchill 👑 once said “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”. We take these words as vital in every endeavour we partake in. We navigate life with one goal and one goal only: to fail miserably.
✨resist✨ : all the funding cuts for new music✨melt borders✨ : between genres and artistic languages
we don’t want you to treat us like we are a business
we don’t want to be asked where we want to be in 5 years
“Lay back, it’s all been done before”¹
sketchy (adj)
not complete or detailed and therefore not very useful
SKETCH351 is not a finished product
is unpolished
is persistent
✨send✨: emails that don’t get replies
is a group of 5
is a quintet
is not a septet
✨manifest✨:
PLAY
“You try to be cool
You look like a fool to me
Tell me”²
HAVE an identity crisis
Have low expectations
Have yourself a merry little christmas
skETC…h351
Sk(etc…)h351
Sk(ETC…)h351
¹, ² – Lavigne, Avril, Complicated, in Let Go, 200
EN
CODAX | for ensemble with soprano – Carlos Lopes, 2024
Codax is a puzzle. It examines absence, distance, and the ever-persistent movement of sea waves, linked together through 13th century Galician-Portuguese poetry and using lighting, stage movement and acoustic spatialization. It is a performative piece for soprano and ensemble structured as a big sound arch, paying tribute to the monolithic qualities of spectral music, particularly in Gérard Grisey and Kaija Saariaho’s work.
Six music modules are uninterruptedly played, from empty to whole and back to emptiness – a solo violin starts the performance; a soprano moves carefully in the hall and guides us through the piece; two baroque trumpets play ancient fanfares off-stage; an ensemble slowly emerges and finally fills the room; as soon as the stage is full, the process slowly reverses until only the soprano remains.
Martim Codax was a 13th century troubadour from Galicia, famed for his 7 cantigas d’amigo (“friend songs”), the only known example of the genre where the original melody survived. *
As a genre of medieval lyric poetry, what makes the cantiga d’amigo special is its focus on the world of female-voiced communication. Women artistic representation was barely existent in the middle ages (and often forbidden), so minstrels challenged the norm by writing about love and longing from the perspective of a woman.
The subversive charm of Codax’s songs and their beautiful simplicity compelled me to use them. Water is the theme that bonds all texts and music together, the wavering grace of the original melodies hinting at wave-like movement. The yearning in the poems, however, addresses absence and uncertainty – a conflict between the ominous darkness undermining the subject’s hope and the bright shimmering sea that she faces daily, wishing for the return of her lover.
Veronique De Raedemaeker, violin
Maria Portela Larisch, soprano
Paulo Fernandes e Carlos Correia, baroque trumpet
Sketch351:
Teresa Costa, flute
Daniel Martins, trombone
Alice Andreani, cello
Inês Lopes, piano
Gonçalo Martins, percussion
PT
CODAX | para ensemble com soprano – Carlos Lopes, 2024
Codax é como um quebra-cabeças. Explora ausência, distância, luz e o movimento contínuo das ondas do mar, conectados através da poesia galaico-portuguesa do século XIII. Utiliza luz, movimento cênico e espacialização acústica. Trata-se de uma peça performativa para soprano e ensemble, estruturada como um grande arco sonoro e prestando homenagem às qualidades monolíticas da música espectral, especialmente
presentes na obra de Gérard Grisey e Kaija Saariaho.
Seis módulos musicais são tocados sem interrupção, conduzindo o público do vazio à plenitude e de volta ao vazio. Um solo para violino inicia a peça; uma soprano movimenta-se pela sala e conduz a narrativa; dois trompetes barrocos tocam fanfarras antigas fora de cena; o ensemble emerge gradualmente, preenchendo o espaço por completo. Quando o palco está repleto, o processo inverte-se lentamente, até restar apenas a soprano.
Martim Codax foi um trovador galego do século XIII, famoso pelas suas sete cantigas d’amigo, o único exemplo conhecido deste género em que a melodia original foi preservada. O que diferencia as cantigas d’amigo de outras poesias medievais é o foco na comunicação feminina. A representação artística das mulheres era quase inexistente na Idade Média (e muitas vezes proibida), de modo que os trovadores desafiavam essa norma escrevendo sobre amor e desejo a partir da perspetiva de uma mulher.
O charme subversivo das canções de Codax e a sua tocante simplicidade convenceram-me a escrever esta obra. A água é o meio que liga o texto e a música, a graciosa oscilação das melodias originais sugerindo movimentos ondulatórios. Contudo, a saudade expressa nos poemas aborda a ausência e a incerteza – um conflito entre a escuridão ameaçadora, que mina a esperança da protagonista, e a luz do mar cintilante, perante o qual ela se encontra diariamente, desejando o regresso do seu amado.
Veronique De Raedemaeker, violino
Maria Portela Larisch, soprano
Paulo Fernandes e Carlos Correia, trompete barroco
Sketch351:
Teresa Costa, flauta
Daniel Martins, trombone
Alice Andreani, violoncelo
Inês Lopes, piano
Gonçalo Martins, percussão
Gonçalo (2001*) is Sketch351’s newly acquired percussionist. Although he’d been the ensemble’s star substitute for the past couple of years, the group eventually decided it was time to lower the average age – so they kicked out the former percussionist* in favor of Gonçalo, or, as his father prefers to call him, Guga.
As a kid he wasn’t sure if he should follow a career in table tennis or clarinet, his first instrument. More than a decade later, he is now freshly out of school where he took a master in percussion at Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag. Funnily enough, his background in percussion ended up improving his racket skills – after all, sound is a great cue for knowing when you’ve struck the ball just right.
Gonçalo performed with many estimated orchestras and ensembles such as Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, Residentie Orkest HIIIT or Het Muziek. He still hasn’t decided if joining Sketch351 is a downgrade in his career path.
It was brilliant ideas such as his great dream of tattooing his butt cheeks that brought him closer to the ensemble. He will be encouraged to explore this side of his brain more often working in Sketch.
Despite being full of energy and always eager to take on transdisciplinary projects, Gonçalo is absolutely terrified at the thought of joining anything involving film projection as the moment a movie starts, he turns completely narcoleptic.
*note: no percussion player was hurt in the makings of this ensemble; we do love you Ricardo, even though you’re old.
Sketch351 is a group of curious musicians trying not to fall into a collective identity crisis while trying to find their place on today’s music scene. In this contradictory realm where they sometimes feel on the verge of entering a Kafka’s novel, they resort to their humor and their innate playfulness to navigate the absurdity of it all and to help them guide their creative process. Recently inspired by the Fluxus Movement’s manuals they transformed their artistic exploration into a playground and started to think about performing music outside the physical and symbolic boundaries of a concert hall.
They’re Dag in de Branding’s artist in residence (2024-2026) and have been developing music theater performances under the guidance of musician Heleen Hulst and actor and director Titus Muizelaar.
In the past years they’ve worked with composers such as Nuno Lobo , Carlos Lopes or Isaac Barzso and performed in The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Delft and Leiden), Portugal (Porto) and in Germany (Cologne).
2025
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REFLUXUS I – presentation at Festival Dag in de Branding (June)
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REFLUXUS II – presentation at Festival Dag in de Branding (October)
2024
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CODAX – Carlos Lopes at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln
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beginning of the residency at Festival Dag in de Branding
2023
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It Rose Behind the River – performance of the new and expanded version of the piece with the support of NORMA funds – at Kaasmarktschool Leiden
2022
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Goodmesh Winners Concert – Vondelkerk, Amsterdam – It Rose Behind the River – premier
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Delft Fringe Festival – It Rose Behind the River
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Conexões II – Exchange Project between ESMAE (Porto, Portugal) and Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag’s composition departments and Sketch351; Concerts at Teatro Teatro Helena Sá e Costa, Porto and Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag
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Collaboration with composer Isaac Barszo on composing the piece “Note: dates not remembered” – premier at Spring Festival Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag
2021
– Goodmesh Concours 2021 Audience Prize together with Nuno lobo and Pedro Lobo for the virtual opera It Rose Behind the River
– Conexões – exchange project with ESMAE’s composition department in Porto – concert at Teatro Helena Sá e Costa, Porto
– Commission to composer Carlos Lopes – Sketch(es)
CONTACT:
sketchensemble351@gmail.com
PRESS KIT
EN
IT ROSE BEHIND THE RIVER for ensemble and video –
Nuno Lobo, 2023
It Rose Behind The River is a “virtual opera” without any singers, actors or representation on stage: almost everything is part of the audience’s imagination. It tells the story of two children that try to run away from adulthood by walking towards a mysterious light on
the horizon. In this made-up world, they meet different creatures that share the same path and the scary expectation of growing older.
Written and composed by Nuno Lobo for ensemble Sketch351
Visualized by Pedro Lobo
In It Rose Behind The River, the melodies were created through close collaboration with the instrumentalists, shaped by their interpretations of their characters and their lines in the script. The composer works as a director, while the musicians perform as actors. At the same time, the music has the task to set the right mood for the narrative (similar to a soundtrack), while giving space for the musical dialogues to lead.
Through a fable-like libretto, we imagined a world where everyone tries to run away from adulthood. Our main characters are two children, Renn and Elena, that depart on a journey towards a mysterious light on the horizon – a light said to be the only way to escape growing up. Along their way, they encounter different creatures and learn the stories each one has to tell.
The music, composed by Nuno Lobo, is the result of a close collaboration with ensemble Sketch351. The instrumentalists become “the singers” that are giving voice to a character: The piccolo is Elena (girl), the trombone is Renn (boy), the melodica is Mr. Larva, the bass drum is Mr. River, the kazoo is Mr. Shadow and the cello is Mr. Tree.
Each of them has guidelines on how to impersonate these characters, with some freedom to interpret the text. The music also sets the mood for the narrative (like a soundtrack), while giving space for the (musical) dialogues.
Alongside the music, Pedro Lobo’s hand-drawn illustrations animate the personalities and give a simple visual trigger for the imagination. The illustrations help to project the “childlike” atmosphere that our story contains.
These drawings are mixed with digital renders of lights, to set the mood for the different moments of the narrative.
In It Rose Behind The River, the melodies were created through close collaboration with the instrumentalists, shaped by their interpretations of their characters and their lines in the script. The composer works as a director, while the musicians perform as actors. At the same time, the music has the task to set the right mood for the narrative (similar to a soundtrack), while giving space for the musical dialogues to lead.
Through a fable-like libretto, we imagined a world where everyone tries to run away from adulthood. Our main characters are two children, Renn and Elena, that depart on a journey towards a mysterious light on the horizon – a light said to be the only way to escape growing up. Along their way, they encounter different creatures and learn the stories each one has to tell.
The music, composed by Nuno Lobo, is the result of a close collaboration with ensemble Sketch351. The instrumentalists become “the singers” that are giving voice to a character: The piccolo is Elena (girl), the trombone is Renn (boy), the melodica is Mr. Larva, the bass drum is Mr. River, the kazoo is Mr. Shadow and the cello is Mr. Tree.
Each of them has guidelines on how to impersonate these characters, with some freedom to interpret the text. The music also sets the mood for the narrative (like a soundtrack), while giving space for the (musical) dialogues.
Alongside the music, Pedro Lobo’s hand-drawn illustrations animate the personalities and give a simple visual trigger for the imagination. The illustrations help to project the “childlike” atmosphere that our story contains.
These drawings are mixed with digital renders of lights, to set the mood for the different moments of the narrative.
Daniel (1997*) is the trombone player and founder of Sketch351. He’s the group’s longest-standing member and was even voted “the nicest person in the ensemble” back in 2022 – a title that, surprisingly, stirred up a bit of controversy among the members at the time. Whenever his fellow humans show such animosity, Daniel just reminds himself that, even without owning a pet, all the neighborhood cats seem to follow him home anyway.
Even though he was born and lived in Portugal for most of his life, he moved to the Netherlands in 2018. Some say his move was driven by a crippling fear of heights. The flatness of the Netherlands offers a rare kind of peace to a man who has spent most of his life denouncing the ladder as a fraudulent and illegitimate invention.
He has performed with the London Film Music Orchestra on their Netherlands/Belgium tour, collaborated repeatedly with Lisbon’s Metropolitan Orchestra playing works by Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, and Brahms, and has taken part in the project Operetta Land with De Nationale Opera, and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Aus Licht, and Meredith Monk’s Indra’s Net at The Holland Festival. Impressive as all that may sound, the undisputed highlight of his career remains the time he played Under the Sea while literally under the sea, traveling through the Eurotunnel.
Even though Daniel studied with great trombone players such as Tim Dowling, Sebastiaan Kemner, Ben van Dijk and Reinaldo Guerreiro, his greatest trombone inspiration, and the very reason he picked up the instrument, is none other than Snoopy.
Inês (1995*) is the pianist of Sketch351 and her biggest dream was to be a raccoon. As a child, she used to create little theater plays with her sisters and her younger cousin, often accompanied by music she performed herself on the piano. She had a bizarre obsession with making music – or sheer noise, depending on who was listening – out of trash and would “compose” weird songs with lyrics so odd that her family still uses them as prime material for gentle mockery. These might be some of the reasons why Inês, after years of classical music training, tends to shy away from the traditional music formats and has been expanding her practice as a musician through interdisciplinary collaborations, projects with unusual instruments such as toy piano or other toy instruments and improvisation. She is fond of contemporary music – on which she has devoted a large part of her piano practice over the past few years – and was delighted to discover that, like her, György Ligeti was also afraid of spiders. In recent years, she has performed in Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, and France – a fact that still amuses her, considering that the first time she ever boarded a plane to go farther than France (given that she’s Portuguese and had always lived in Portugal until that point) was to the Netherlands in 2019, when she was almost 24. The majority of these performances were together with her “toy instrument contemporary music impro garage band” Novelo Vago and as a part of Vera Morais’ ensemble. Inês is usually held as an extremely serious person as her dry sarcastic humour doesn’t always translate. If you ever question her validity as a professional musician take into consideration that she holds two master degrees in performance – one taken in Portugal at ESMAE in Porto and the other in The Netherlands at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag.
Teresa (1998*) is Sketch351’s flutist. When she was 12 she was obsessed with the idea of being part of a garage band. She did actually start a two-flutes, clarinet, piano and guitar band but their entire discography was one song repeating “I feel the music inside of me”. It was her subsequent search for such rich artistic projects that made her join Sketch351 many years later.
She is now part of many more contemporary and/or original music projects such as duo Suzanne, Ladrem, pardais!, EUPNEA and Novelo Vago and as partaken in projects in the field of theatre and performing arts where she collaborated with Maria Magdalena Kozlowska in 2021 (Frascati Theatre), António Afonso Parra in 2022 (A Turma), and Gonçalo Amorim in 2025 (Teatro Experimental do Porto).
Despite having to juggle such a busy schedule, she somehow finds time to watch a huge amount of knitting reels every day. Actual knitting, however, remains theoretical: she has produced precisely one microscopic scarf and nothing else.
Teresa applies the same “say yes and figure it out later” attitude from her professional life directly to her personal one. Just as she joined LIÇO – a collective exploring the intersection of polyphonic singing and wool crafts – she also enthusiastically signed up for a Brazilian funk dance class, with absolutely no regard for practicality, preparation or hip coordination.
She has plenty more impressive credits that could be listed here to prove her artistic chops, but even more remarkable is that, despite being a professional-level crier – movies, songs, her own falls, other people’s falls, minor conflicts, or sometimes absolutely nothing at all -she is, somehow, a fully functioning professional musician.
