Composer Mark Hendriks’ request to perform music from the James Bond movies was well received by student symphony orchestra Ensuite of ESGM Quadrivium. Especially by conductor Bart Partouns, who has been working with the orchestra since 2014. “He talks about scenes form the movies during rehearsals,” student Leathitia Held says. She plays viola in the orchestra and is involved in the organization of the concert.

Ensuite has approximately forty members and will be joined by twenty extra musicians during this concert, including former members, a jazz combo from student jazz association Studentproof Jazz, and three vocalists from conservatories in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. “They had to audition. The singers of Vokollage are more used to the classical repertoire, but we needed voices that sound jazzier.”

Occasion

Dr. No, the first movie featuring secret agent James Bond, was released in 1962. Fifty years later, composer Mark Hendriks wrote music for the Brabants Symfonieorkest, which still existed at the time, to mark the occasion. “Unfortunately, that orchestra was dissolved and they never got to perform it,” Held says. And that wasn’t the only thing that got cancelled. “Mark Hendriks got to know Ensuite via a piece he wrote to celebrate greater Eindhoven’s 100th anniversary. Ensuite was supposed to take part in that project, but it got cancelled due to corona.” This spring, Hendriks asked the students if they would be willing to perform his arrangement of James Bond music. He also wrote a few additional songs about the movies that were released over the past decade.

The concert ‘License to play’ covers all of the James Bond movies, starting with the first one from 1962, in which 007 travels to Jamaica, and ending with the final installment, in which James Bond is being chased in Italy. The two-hour concert will also include theme songs that became famous thanks to Adele (Skyfall), Shirley Bassey (Diamonds Are Forever) and Billie Eilish (No Time to Die).

To add some extra class, martinis will be served during intermission, shaken, not stirred. Viola player Laethitia won’t join in. “I don’t drink alcohol when I play. But I might round off the evening with a drink.”

The concert will take place in the Parktheater on December the 3rd. You can order tickets here.