The two-year programme combines a personal study route with a shared curriculum. In your individual study route, you will take main subject lessons and receive personal coaching. You will have a personal budget for masterclasses and training, and each year you will write a personal study plan with your learning goals and research questions. In the shared part of the programme, you will work in the Performance Lab on concept development, stage presentation and audience engagement, directly linking your research to practice.
Programme structure: in year 1, you will deepen your technique and interpretation, explore new performance practices and lay the foundation for your research direction. In year 2, you will focus on production and presentation, expand your portfolio, collaborate with external coaches or partners where relevant, and complete your studies with a master’s project – a performative final work with a substantiated curatorial context and a clear research rationale.
In your individual study route, you will take your main subject lessons, delving deeper into your field while continuing to develop your musical knowledge and instrumental or vocal skills. You will be encouraged to take responsibility for your own study process and artistic development. Within the framework of the programme, you are free to explore creative solutions and experiment.
Every Tuesday, you will work in the Performance Lab on all aspects of live performance: stage presentation, theatricality, audience engagement, writing and concept development. You will develop, test and refine your ideas in short sprints. You will attend each other’s try-outs, give focused feedback and immediately apply what you learn in your next version. In this way, you learn with and from one another. The academic year is divided into blocks, each concluding with a public presentation.
Guest artists from the international professional field will work hands-on with you – not only to make music together, but to design meaningful experiences that are current, personal and for real audiences. You will learn to build formats that fit the place and purpose, and to connect familiar repertoire with new forms and contexts.
Residency Project (years 1 and 2)
In both years, you will work in a residency with a leading ensemble or maker. Examples include:
- Nederlands Blazers Ensemble (NBE): students explored the NBE’s working methods and received musical and conceptual guidance, later developing a performance route through Zwolle.
- Ragazze Quartet: coaching focused on interdisciplinary performance, with results presented at SeptemberMe.
- Earlier residents included the Nederlands Kamerkoor and Holland Baroque.
Within the Performance Lab, you will be encouraged to unite the traditional and the new – to integrate what is familiar into what is still unknown. You will gain stage experience, refine your artistic signature and learn to work with and for your audience.
Connecting the Dots includes a project week, various workshops and the Meet the Master course. This part of the programme focuses on exchange, collaboration and connection: you will get a taste of other disciplines and benefit from working with makers who, like you, are developing their own practice.
The theme and approach of the project week are decided together each year. In 2025, guest artist and choreographer Martin Butler led a mini-festival of site-specific performances, guided by coaches specialising in text, improvisation, sound & space and graphic scores.
Another example was the 2022-23 theme ‘moving images’. Guest lecturer and composer Jacob ter Veldhuis (Jacob TV) immersed the group for three days in a world of grooving, speech-sample-based boombox compositions, colourful orchestral works and the reality opera THE NEWS. Students worked in teams on their own concepts, supported by coaches from different disciplines. The week concluded with a performance at Focus Filmtheater Arnhem.