Belonging, for Storm in a Jar
08 July 2026
What we possess and what possesses us – these have always been political questions, philosophical questions, and quietly personal ones. Belonging: Everything I have, Nothing I own is a new song cycle for vocal quartet that tries to hold all three registers at once.
The work was composed for Storm in a Jar, a new vocal quartet whose sound made me want to write music that moves between the monumental and the intimate, between the chanted and the spoken, between a single sustained word and a long, searching sentence.
The texts are inspired by four sources, each of which approaches belonging from a different direction. Rosa Luxemburg writes about the land and the water – what was always here before us, what gets taken, what can never truly be owned. Hannah Arendt gives us the table: the space that stands between people, holding them together and apart, belonging to no one and therefore to everyone. James Baldwin asks us to look at each other, really look, and argues that this witnessing is the most fundamental thing we owe one another. And a fourth text, *Is My Name*, moves through the interior – the self inventorying everything it lays claim to, and ending with a question it cannot fully answer.
Storm in a Jar tour the work from September throughout the Netherlands, in a programme that also includes new compositions by Iannis Kyriakides, Nicoline Soeter and Rianne Wilbers, alongside music by Thelonious Monk. Tour dates 2026-2027 in the agenda.