Music for Leisure
The Flemish choir Polyfoon was established 20 years ago, in 1999. It has had its own characteristic sound in the Flemish choir scene right from the start.
Polyfoon organized large-scale projects with music, pictures and words around special themes. There is one constant factor: every project consists of an unexpected encounter between early and contemporary polyphonic and every concert is constructed around one specific theme, story or composer.
In 2010, Polyfoon cooperated with Zen monk and composer Luc de winter, who studied organ and composition at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven (part of the LUCA school of arts). He has been an active Zen Buddhist for a long time and he became an ordained monk in 2003.
He composed seven pieces: the Sandokai Zen and Polyphony cycle, which were based on classical texts from Zen Buddhism, in innovative English translations which had sometimes been made especially for this purpose.
To work with this music and the texts was for the members of the Polyfoon choir not only a musical, but also a personal enrichment. ‘We have learnt that rational understanding is not per default a prerequisite to make music’, says artistic leader Johan Geerts. ‘To go beyond the intellectual understanding, isn’t that what the essence of art is about?’
Luc de Winter (1966) – Cyclus Sandokai Zen and Polyphony
1) Emmei Jukku Kannon Gy: Ten line Sutra of Avalokiteshvara’s Boundless Life à 4
2) Hannya Shingyo: The sutra on the heart of Realising Wisdom beyond Wisdom à 4
