If you've ever tuned into the Stingray Classica music channel, you've almost certainly seen contributions from the Evil Penguin production house. Their concert recordings are easy to spot because they typically showcase artists from our own region and are shot with exceptional care. And this is only ever a glimpse of what the Evil Penguin production house has tucked away in its treasure chest. But they also have their own channel, Evil Penguin TV, and starting June 26, you'll find them in cinemas for the first time.
Evil Penguin, which in July 2019 became both a record label and a streaming platform alongside its existing operations, can draw from a rich archive of professional audio and video recordings. When Steven Maes started the recording studio MotorMusic in 1993 together with Hans Bellens, he couldn't have imagined this was the beginning of a valuable collection of concert recordings for clients such as Concertgebouw Brugge, Flagey, Festival van Vlaanderen, Brussels Philharmonic, and others. His recordings have earned praise from BBC Music Magazine, Diapason, and Gramophone. They produce programs for Arte, Medici, VRT, and more, which are distributed internationally by EuroArts, the biggest player in the field.
In this small treasure trove, the emphasis is on 'Belgian' and more on the performers than on the repertoire—on artists with a certain X-factor who draw audiences in the moment they step on stage and create sparks. In the EPRC stable we find, among others, the charismatic late Walter Boeykens, as the prototype of the EP artist. The delightfully eccentric 'sighing Dutchman' Pieter Wispelwey, the hyperactive conductor Hervé Niquet, or the late Wim Henderickx, whose opera 'De Bekeerlinge' can be seen in full on Evil Penguin TV. B'Rock, Vox Luminis, A Nocte Temporis by Reinoud Van Mechelen—these are just a few of the ensembles in the Evil Penguin TV database. Benjamin Glorieux, who knows his way around both a historical and an electric cello, is to be found on the more alternative sister label Antarctica.
A team of delightfully eccentric penguins
Who manages to pull all this off? A non-subsidized crew of hardworking ants who hope their efforts will make someone else happy. People who are each bitten by music, by sound and technique in particular. The youngest member of the diverse team is only 21 and fresh out of school, while founding father Steven Maes is and remains one of the driving forces. And in between there's a whole range of people possessed by music. What does music do to the performers? How does the performer want it to sound? That is their greatest concern. The Evil Penguin sound engineers try to listen well, dive into the score with the musicians, work with music directors, and still marvel daily at the magic of music.
Evil Penguin TV was launched just before the Corona outbreak, which proved to be both a curse and a blessing. Of course, nothing quite compares to the experience of a live concert, yet attitudes have shifted since then and the threshold for watching an online concert has been lowered. Especially when the camera gets up close to the performers, because as a viewer you still get closer than from seat 19, row H in the concert hall. The fact that the concerts Evil Penguin TV delivers twice a week on Stingray Classica attract 120,000 viewers monthly proves, according to the makers, that there is an audience that loves a slower way of experiencing music. Perhaps concert on demand is a way for us to reduce our carbon footprint in the future and travel shorter distances for our concert experience?
Evil Penguin on laptop, TV, and in cinemas
Why would someone subscribe to Evil Penguin TV? "Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Ricardo Muti are the golden geese that big media players love to show off, while Evil Penguin TV wants to create new content with the opinionated talent from our own backyard," says Steven Maes. "Names that can hold their own against the big shots and have broken through internationally, even if we don't always realize it. It's almost unbelievable how much talent our region has to offer, almost like in the era of Franco-Flemish polyphonists, but if you're not with one of the biggest labels like DG, it's just a bit harder to make it. With Evil Penguin TV, we're happy to give that talent a platform where viewers can really enjoy it."
The wet dream from the beginning of making a culture journal like Man Bites Dog is certainly not shelved, but it's since been overtaken on the right. Because Evil Penguin TV and the Lumière cinemas have joined forces and will work together to regularly bring Evil Penguin programs to the big screen. Evil Penguin TV doesn't just film concerts, they place them in a broader context or create standalone documentaries about a composer, an instrument, and so on—for example, when Kurt Van Eeghem gives an inviting introduction on the Meir before letting viewers enter the Palace for a Mozart concert featuring clarinetist Eddy Vanoosthuyse and the Zemlinsky Quartet.
On Monday, June 26, 2023, "A Farewell to Paris" will be shown at Lumière Mechelen, a film about the rich history of the Érard piano and the research Tom Beghin conducted on it. Did you know that Beethoven ordered an Érard in Paris in 1803 but later had it completely rebuilt into a German piano? That's the kind of stories we're talking about.
Evil Penguin TV can be visited entirely free for 14 days. After that, it costs €49 for a yearly subscription or €3.99 for a video on demand. You can find the site at:www.evilpenguintv.com
** Evil Penguin TV on Stingray Classica:
every Wednesday at 20:30 and every Saturday at 14:00, though it should be noted that the programming on Stingray Classica unfortunately sometimes differs from the actual broadcasts. https://classica.stingray.com/en/NL/schedule/CLA006/daily/2023-06-13
A little vocabulary:
Antarctica, the penguin's playground (since 2007 a record label with attention for multiple styles and genres, including contemporary)evil penguin, the naughty penguin who prefers to color outside the lines
Evil Penguin, production company in MechelenEPRC, Evil Penguin Record Classics (since 2007 a record label for classical music)
Evil Penguin TV, streaming platform for classical music, launched on June 19, 2019. MotorMusic, the studio in Mechelen where it all started, an image and sound factory.
penguin: a black and white colored bird that only occurs in the Northern Hemisphere, sometimes associated with the tuxedo of the conductor. Stingray Classica, streaming platform for classical music, where
Evil Penguin TV, streaming platform for classical music, launched on June 19, 2019.
MotorMusic, the studio in Mechelen where it all started, a image and sound factory.
penguin: a black and white colored bird, found only in the Northern Hemisphere, sometimes associated with a conductor's tuxedo.
Stingray Classica streaming platform for classical music, where Evil Penguin TV twice a week a slot that can be watched in Belgium and the Netherlands.
