The Four Frogs in the Woods is an experimental string quartet that pushes the boundary shifts between sound art, free improvisation, folk and jazz.
Rosa Berman - Violin
Tania Bräcklein - Violin
Anne Eding - Viola
Kim Jäger - Cello
The Frogs got to know each other while studying at the ArtEZ conservatory in Arnhem. Jasper le Clercq, known for the Zapp 4 quartet, among others, has coached them in the first year. In addition, they have courses and followed masterclasses with Etienne Nillesen, Ernst Reijseger and the Omer Klein Trio.
After 3.5 years together, the Frogs are a team attuned to each other. They are flexible in combining genres and creating compositions and improvisations with sources of inspiration such as images, text and themes. This blurs the boundaries between different art disciplines and new sound-based atmospheres in which music and sound are discovered in a new way.
The Frogs are a string quartet that can be seen and heard in various places, in recent years in the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Musis and various places around Arnhem. Over the past 2 years, the Frogs have also started to delve into the combination between music and theatre.
The focus is mainly on how the music they play relative to the body and the voice.
The Frogs use various surrealistic images and create techniques to to use body and voice in their performances. The inspiration for free improvisations, concept improvisations and own compositions mostly comes from the sound art discipline, but also Scandinavian folk and traditional jazz influences are part of the repertoire and can be heard in their own work. Danish String Quartet, Zapp4, Sheriffs of Nothingness, Christian Wohlfarth & Frantz Loriot and Emiszatett are some examples here by.
“The moment when everyone follows their impulses and there is a deep connection between the audience and the musicians is what we strive for. That's how everyone is concert a unique experience where you never know where it will end”.