Sometimes, something great emerges — something that transcends borders. At Calefax, we are experiencing that moment now. For 40 years, we have been putting the reed quintet on the map. What started as an idea by five secondary school students has grown into a global movement that now includes more than 70 reed quintets based everywhere from New Zealand to New York.

🎉 And we’re celebrating in style!

To mark our anniversary, prize-winning composer Michel van der Aa has written an adventurous and colourful piece especially for us: Link. That piece? It will be performed by 40 reed quintets all over the world in 40 days.

All of these performances can be found on reedquintet.net, a new digital platform for reed quintets and their fans. To achieve this, we are adding an online concert hall to the site. A new video will be added daily, starting on Sunday 12 October. This is exactly 40 days before Calefax’s official anniversary, which will be celebrated with a four-day festival in Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ from 20 to 23 November.

What will be happening in the online concert hall? Each day, a different reed quintet introduces themselves, provides insight into their creative process, and performs a passage from Van der Aa’s work. In this way, we will bring the work and the reed quintets — in all their diversity — to life day by day.

We want to give everyone, everywhere, the chance to enjoy this unique musical relay for free. But to do that, we need your help!

With your contribution, we can:

🎼 Support the 40 ensembles with sheet music, video recordings and coordination
🎥 Bring the videos together professionally in one online concert hall
🌐 Make the reed quintet visible to audiences and programmers worldwide

We are almost there. The composition is finished. The musicians are ready. Now all we need is you! Get involved, support us, and help the reed quintet continue to conquer the world!

Contribute to our crowdfunding at www.voordekunst.nl.