Nederlands Kammerchor

Susanne introduced the speaker for tonight: Mr. Leo Samama who, after a career as composer, musicologist and author (8 books) and lecturer has dedicated these last few years to orchestra managing (among which we can cite the Residentieorchestra in den Haag).

Since 2003, he is the manager of the Nederlandse Kammerchoor, an highly skilled and specialized choir which comprises around 20 singers and performs 50 to 70 concerts a year with roughly 20 different programmes.

Our fellow Rotarian, explained us that his main tasks were, on one side to make sure that the choir remained within the top five in the world, and on the other side to have significant improvement in the communication within the group and towards the exterior. In particularly he tried to change their mentality so that the musicians could become more talkative, realise and express their potential, promote their ideas to improve different aspects of their work and be self-sufficient in resolving their internal problems.

Mr. Samama then went on to explain that during the last year he has been very busy trying to convince the government not to change their support to the choir and finance it to nearly up to 2 M?. In order to do so he had to bring forward the pluses of his choir in respect to any other group of singers in The Netherlands such as tradition, exceptional quality and the collaboration with top-composers. His work was successful since he managed to obtain a yearly financing of 1,6 M? against the 800 k? which were first offered.

The speaker ended the talk by reproducing a small sample from a performance of his choir and stating that the Nederlandse Kammerchoor was a ensemble of gifted musicians that can perform solos rather than a group of soloists who can perform together.

The presentation was very well accepted and several questions were asked. Terry S. thanked Mr. Samama on behalf of the Club and Ehsan presented him with a copy of our "Taste for Life" cookbook.

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