How does a year feel, captured in music and words?
De Seizoenen is an adventurous, contemporary cycle through the year in which music, poetry, illustration and performance merge into one 360° art experience. What does time sound like? The Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed twelve musical pieces for the months of the year in 1875–1876. Each month of the year was brought to musical life. Now pianist Marie François and poets Ester Naomi Perquin and Max Temmerman bring this iconic piano cycle back to life and give it a poetic breath (in collaboration with VONK & Zonen).
What emerges is not a traditional concert, but a theatrical ritual about time, repetition and transience. A year unfolds: from the tentative awakening of spring to the stillness of winter. The music is accompanied by new poetry, specially written for this project by Ester Naomi Perquin and Max Temmerman. Das Mag will also publish a collection of twelve poems about the months in October.
Duration: +/- 75 minutes
Biographies makers
Ester Naomi Perquin (1980) grew up in Zierikzee and lives in Rotterdam. She made her debut in 2007 with Servetten halfstok, followed by collections such as Namens de ander (2009) and Celinspecties (2012), for which she won the VSB Poetry Prize. She was City Poet of Rotterdam (2011–2012) and Dichter des Vaderlands (2017–2019). In 2025, her first novel Tot alles in beweging komt was published. Her work is widely praised for its sharp eye for everyday life, her humour and her multifaceted perspective on social issues.
Max Temmerman made his debut in 2011 with the acclaimed poetry collection Vaderland, which earned him a nomination for the 2012 C. Buddingh’ Prize. In October 2013, the successful follow-up Bijna een Amerika was published. The collection won the Herman de Coninck Audience Prize and was nominated for the Jo Peeters Poetry Prize 2014 and the J.C. Bloem Prize 2015. In 2020, Coniferen was published, a dark tale in which he combines the thunderous pace of a Simenon novel with his own poetic voice. Coniferen was nominated for the Bronze Owl Debut Prize and was soon followed by other novels.
Marie François is a Belgian pianist. She has appeared at festivals including B-Classic, the Miami Piano Festival, Schiermonnikoog Festival and the Aurora Music Festival, and has collaborated with artists including Dirk Brossé, Geza Hosszu-Legocky and Herman Engels. Her debut album Eclectic / Being Me (2019, Challenge Records) was selected worldwide by Apple Music as one of the ten best classical releases of the month; this was followed by Memories of Tomorrow (2021) and Amitié musicale à quatre-mains (2024) with Simon Adda-Reyss. Alongside her work on stage, François is also active as a writer, speaker and creator: during the COVID-19 pandemic, she organised The Corona Cure, hosts the podcast Musings with Marie and received a Belgian Podcast Award for her Chopin project Who Doesn’t Love Chopin’s Nocturnes. She studied with, among others, Joop Celis, Alan Weiss, Polina Leschenko and Elisso Virsaladze, is the first Classical Yamaha Artist in the Benelux and was a scholarship recipient at the Bayreuth Festival in 2024.
Credits
Concept: Marie François
Poets: Ester Naomi Perquin, Max Temmerman
Music: Marie François after Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Illustration: Juliane Noll
Artistic team: Marie François, Max Temmerman, Pim Cornelussen, Michaël Vandebril
Direction: Tom Goossens
Set design & lighting: Gilles Pollak
Production: VONK & Zonen
Co-production: Per Podium, Poëziecentrum, Evil Penguin Classic
With support from: Mercier Van Lanschot, De Standaard, Grafixx and the taxshelter of the Belgische Federale Overheid