Student Thalisa Jagt about her internship: 'Icelanders cold and distant? They're just honest.'

It's actually quite remarkable. In addition to composition assignments for, for example, the Budapest Scoring Orchestra and Phion, the MM students are also taking the initiative this year to organize a graduation project. "With a self-organized orchestra, we want to showcase our entrepreneurial spirit and compositions," explains Thalisa Jagt, who chose the Films, Games & Media Composer profile during her studies. Among other things, there will be an MM-Talk, a variation of the TED Talk, where students will have fifteen minutes each to share something. Thalisa says, "I will talk about the highlights of my internship, among other things." But that's not all. A few days before that, the stage will also be filled by a large ensemble that will perform the composed music of Thalisa and her classmates. "That has been a wish of mine since the first year. During that performance, I will occasionally be on the stage myself, at least to conduct my own piece. I will support other pieces with an instrument."

Computernerd 

She has been playing the piano since she was six years old, was a fan of Mozart, and dreamed of composing film music. "I love music and I'm very creative in that field," says Thalisa. "During my studies, I met many more music enthusiasts and finally had classmates who shared the same interest in films and music, which was really fun." Although she wouldn't have considered herself a "computer nerd" a few years ago, she now identifies as one. Thalisa laughs. "You learn that during the program. And luckily, because of that, I developed a great love for electronic music."

Returning to her internship period, the first one was at the music production studio Omnisound, and the second one was at The Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, a company that provides fully equipped recording studios. Thalisa says, "By the way, I highly recommend doing two internships. Many students don't do it due to time constraints and busyness, but I found it to be a great way to combine two things: at Omnisound, I did the work that I love, and at The Greenhouse, it was more about the overall experience that made it worthwhile." When asked about the biggest contrast between working in the Netherlands and Iceland, Thalisa responds, "Iceland is quite national in terms of work, but it also has a strong Scandinavian influence, which I think is mainly due to the language. Initially, I thought the culture was somewhat distant and cold, but later I realized that people there are just very honest and don't feel the need to be friendly towards someone they don't know."

Musical and creative education

While Thalisa initially had to adjust to being one of the few girls in the program, that feeling quickly faded away. "Everyone is welcome at MediaMusic, and you can feel that. It's a very personal education where everyone is treated the same, regardless of who or what you are." Why the program has fewer girls, Thalisa thinks it might be due to the image. "Indeed, you do work a lot with computers, but it's primarily a very musical and creative education. I used to think games were cool, but I never really considered that I could create music for them. During MediaMusic and the profile I chose (Films, Games & Media Composer), I realized that it's much more interesting than I thought, partly because of the way it's created. For composing game music, we always had access to the latest audio technology and game engines, which was really great."

Film composition

Thalisa says that after her education, she would prefer to do something related to composition for media. "The dream of sitting in a cinema and watching a film that I have composed from beginning to end still exists. I would absolutely love that. The same goes for a game, although the desire for film composition is slightly stronger."

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