Kika Sprangers solo (huiskamerconcert) + expo Physis

Saxophonist, composer and arranger Kika Sprangers has performed on all major Dutch jazz stages with her quintet and her Large Ensemble.

With her Large Ensemble, she recently released her new album Infinity. Kika finds her inspiration in great portrait photographers like Anton Corbijn, strong character writers like Griet Op de Beeck and film artists like Norwegian saxophonist Mette Henriette. The hushed passion that defines their work is something Kika also wants to capture at the core of her music.

Kika’s playing is all about uniting vulnerability and strength. A vision that expresses itself musically in a penchant for unorthodox line-ups and exciting arcs from symphonically full passages to charged silences. Her first love is jazz, but her musical inspiration certainly also lies with twentieth-century composers such as Arvo Pärt and Maurice Ravel. In 2021, she received the Rogier van Otterloo Award.

In 2018, Sprangers already performed at Leuven Jazz as part of the B-Jazz International Contest and won the Award for best arrangement.

Expo PHYSIS - Jean De Groote

Before and after the concert, you are also welcome to visit the exhibition PHYSIS by Belgian artist Jean De Groote (°1955).

Often called the ‘Painter of Silence’, De Groote works with precision and restraint. His subjects – a red-and-blue eraser, a coat rack, an empty frame – are stripped of any explicit narrative. They stand in quiet tension, as if caught between memory and oblivion, between form and disappearance.

There is no sentimentality in his shades of grey, and his palette contains no grand gestures. Instead, De Groote approaches his subjects with the same stoicism he brings to life. His objects, like his thoughts, are subdued – offering only what is essential. In their silence, they resist easy interpretations.

His work is an exercise in reduction, reducing the image to its essence. The light, when it falls, does not reveal what is hidden, but makes clear what is already there. A moment of clarity, not revelation. A brief suspension of time.

De Groote’s paintings create space for the unspoken. In their restraint, they reflect the quiet determination of a lone wolf, moving forward with deliberate steps, indifferent to the noise of the world. To see a painting by De Groote is to stand at the edge of an open field, where silence reigns and the horizon seems endless. It is a confrontation with the essence of things.