Esmée Olthuis en Hans Leeuw

Esmée Olthuis and Hans Leeuw

Artistic director Esmée Olthuis

Esmée Olthuis is a saxophone player, a composer, a teacher and a cultural originator.

“A tone like liquid gold,” is how the press described Esmée’s style. “Constantly seeking the essence of music, sometimes finding it in a vibrant stream of energy, at other times in a musical still-life, devoid of motion.”
Esmée Olthuis plays in a number of ensembles, including the Tetzepi Bigtet, the duo Olthuis & van Veenendaal, and the musical dance improvisation outfit Rosie Wooff. She performs throughout the Netherlands and abroad. Esmée Olthuis composes music for both her own formations and on commission. She has earned her keep, as an educator, organiser and initiator of various projects.

Esmée Olthuis is artistic director of the Tetzepi Foundation and bandleader of the Tetzepi musical ensemble.

She also produces jazz operas, musical audio books for young people and musical theatre for grown-ups, with her musical-theatre group Wolf Speelt.

Esmée is an improviser of the purest kind, always on the lookout for elements of beauty, the unique, extremes and surprises.

Artistic director Hans Leeuw

Hans Leeuw is a trumpet player, a composer and an artistic director. He teaches at several professional colleges and universities (including Eindhoven University of Technology’s Industrial Design programme and at Utrecht School of the Arts’ Music Technology programme), he designs his own (semi)electronic musical instruments and has initiated several projects in this regard.

In addition to being the inventor of the electrumpet, Hans Leeuw is currently developing ORFF instruments for the 21st century and an ‘’Infrared Multitouch Dance Floor”.

Hans Leeuw composed several pieces for Tetzepi, including a trilogy inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, (consisting of the pieces Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso) which draws on the Carnatic principles of composition and Dante’s poetic style.