History of the Schreck ensemble

	Tjitse Letterie	- violin
	Arie van Schutterhoef	- crackle synthesizer
	Hans van Eck	- keyboard synthesizer
	Colin McClure	- sound technician, sound director

In 1992 the bass clarinettist Hein Pijnenburg joined the ensemble and in 1993 the violinist Tiziana Pintus took over from Tjitse Letterie. The soprano Janice Jackson also joined the core group of musicians. Hans van Eck began focusing more on sound direction, while Colin McClure's workload as a sound technician steadily increased as we started to develop our ideas on microphone techniques in this period.

In 1996 the ensemble reached a milestone with the performance of significant works by the iconic Italian composer Luigi Nono. This 'Ascolta' project was a significant one for the ensemble: we were compelled to function at a new higher level, both musically and in terms of how we operated as an organisation. The computer programmer Pieter Suurmond joined the group and applied his considerable skills to helping us solve taxing problems such as the recreation of old effects from sound equipment that had already become obsolete.

In 1997 we began collaborating with the sound artist Hans van Koolwijk, , a builder of newly developed instruments and constructor of large-scale sound installations. We jointly realised the project 'De Dag' [The Day], a combination of his successful work Bambuso Sonoro, our live electronics and our new instruments the Stratifier and the BassBoxes. This collaboration has continued up until the present.

2000 saw the creation of the large-scale multimedia work 'Nuctemeron' with music composed by Hans van Eck and videos created by Arie van Schutterhoef. The first version of this work was given its premiere in Arhus, Denmark, in 2001. A later theatre version of the work for a larger instrumental setting was performed in 2006/2007 under the direction of Bart Visser.

In 2003 the soprano Caroline Erkelens Erkelens replaced the singer Janice Jackson, who had returned to her homeland Canada. During the same year we were able to present our spectrum recognition software programme ComParser for the first time.

In 2006 Jan-Kees van Kampen Kampen joined the ensemble to help with the programming of SuperCollider-3, the most important software packet for sound transformation and generation of sound, while the technician Evert de Cock took over as sound director in complex performances such as Nuctemeron.

In 2006 the latest significant change in the ensemble's line-up took place: the bass clarinettist Carlos Galvez-Taroncher replaced Hein Pijnenburg.

The various lines of focus initiated by Schreck over the past years continue to evolve. A significant step was the recent splitting of the ensemble to create our improvisation department Schreck Assembly, which gives improvisation a clearly defined base in the ensemble.

The BassBoxes in the Turlej Gallery in Krakow.