The mission is to make the invisible side of neurological progressive disorders such as Parkinson’s disease visible and address the ever-increasing prevalence of mental health difficulties. By expressing the patient’s invisible world of thoughts and feelings in an artistic way, we hope to create empathy and understanding in the outside world.
As a patient suffering from a neurological disorder, as with so many people suffering from mental health difficulties, you are constantly challenged in dealing with change, flexibility, development and other setbacks. It helps if the patient’s immediate environment, a wider circle outside and society as a whole recognise this and deal with it appropriately.
We aim to create a more inclusive society by getting this message out to a wider audience while at the same time create spaces and environments that can actually not just allow understanding but give people direct ways of dealing with personal issues. We do this through art, and in particular, though music. Art is able to depict the inner self and express change, emotion and feeling. Change and a different understanding can actually be beautiful and valuable in a world where there is more and more rigidity and false security.
Dutch based Ukrainian composer Maxim Shalygin is producing a piece of music theatre for solo female voice and string ensemble. The narrative of the piece is a monologue depicted in 12 dreams, in which the struggles of living with Parkinson’s disease (and mental illness in general) are being shared with the audience. Each dream a different aspect to come to terms with.
Composer Yannis Kyriakides created a work for bass clarinet, stings, live video and electronics focussing on aspects of loss of identity. Live video and electronics are used to fracture and multiply the ongoing performance A gradual transformation takes place of the players throughout the 45 minutes of the piece that focus on both the sound and the physical aspects of the instrument mirroring the aspects of depersonalisation and detachment that are side effects of DBS surgery.
Sufferers of neurological disorders can experience the gradual juxtaposition of a sense of being trapped within their own bodies. In the course of the various stages of disease, they therefore have to reinvent themselves again and again. The project 'Voices' asks composers to deal artistically through the use of the human voice, with the phenomena of these diseases, with control and loss of control, with transience and resistance and with the amazing human ability to adapt to new situations and to adjust.
This music theatre piece from an Austrian composer Bernhard Lang is based on the writings, drawings and concepts of an architect and writer, afflicted with Parkinson’s disease.
In a rhizomatic wandering through these texts the music tries to explore the effects and side-effects of Parkinson’s disease on the mind of a creative person.
PD brings about questions of perception, identity, death and life, all seen from the point of view of a mind, which is afflicted by it itself.
Auditory Reset is a new initiative of an ongoing concert programme line, starting from the 2nd half of 2022 in Amsterdam.
Each concert is planned for every second Tuesday of the month and will last approximately 30min. We are aiming for a time slot in which people just finished their work and thus starting at 18:00. The venue is suited perfectly for a chamber-sized audience. This embracing and almost intimate atmosphere will create an unusual experience for the audience with an aim to regenerate or regain energy in between their day-to-day activities.
This site-specific event of Stockhausen’s work that explores both physical (sensual) and mental perception to crisis by creating a space in which an individual has the opportunity for physical and metaphysical reaction to the three artistic pillars – sound, light and space itself, and a possibility of finding balance.
Aus Den Sieben Tagen has been perfomered several times around the Europe since summer 2021.
This project is organised by a Dutch foundation BeeGee Productions.
A Swiss composer Roland Dahinden created a piece of music for Gareth Davis using bass clarinet and electronics. In creating his sound, Roland was inspired by the real aspects of living with mental illness and the visual artwork. He is exploring how the painted images can be used as a guidance to the performer in playing the piece, almost like a kind of game between the composer and player.
Theatre of the Mind had a premiere at the Ostrava Days Festival of Contemporary Musicin the summer 2021.
In December 2025, Klang Systematiek premiered Paranoia II by Bernhard Lang at Divadlo X10 in Prague. Commissioned by Stichting Mousai, the work was met with a strong and enthusiastic response from audiences. Scored for bass clarinet, double Read more
In 2024, In Darkness by Evis Sammoutis was released on the Kairos label. The recording features the Neue Vocalsolisten alongside bass clarinettist Gareth Davis and documents a work commissioned by Stichting Mousai in 2022. Drawing inspiration from Read more
In 2024, Theatre of the Mind by Swiss composer Roland Dahinden was released on the Moving Furniture label. Written for bass clarinet and electronics and performed by Gareth Davis, the work was commissioned by Stichting Mousai as Read more
Donaueschinger Musiktage 2022 saw the premiere of a number of works commissioned by the foundation. The first concert saw the premiere of works by Evis Sammoutis and Iris ter Schiphorst, which are part of the 'Voices' project, a series of commissions asking composers to address the subject of Neurological Disorder, Parkinson’s Disease and mental health issues through the human voice. The second performance was the premiere of Cheap Opera #3 by Bernhard Lang a music theatre is based on the writings, drawings and concepts of an architect and writer, afflicted with Parkinson’s disease.
Roland Dahinden’s Theatre of the Mind received it’s premiere as the opening performance of the Ostrava Days Festival of Contemporary Music in August 2021. This was the first of two Stichting Mousai supported projects that Read more