There are projects that don't happen by chance, but are the result of a long inner ripening process.
Your Flesh and Blood: a passion full of people by Jef Neve is such a work. On the eve of the world premiere, Werner De Smet spoke with the composer about his deep connection to Bach, his collaboration with writer Jeroen Olyslaegers, and why he no longer considers himself a jazz musician.
A centuries-old story, newly urgent
The passion as a musical form has something fundamentally inescapable about it. It confronts us with the sacrifice of the innocent, with the stubbornness of the masses, with the question of who or what we are willing to sacrifice for our own peace of mind. Jef Neve sees this as both timeless and urgently needed: "It's a centuries-old story that people who confront us with society's shortcomings are sacrificed themselves. That's why we must keep telling this story."
His homage to Bach is not a nostalgic look backward, but a conscious return to a living source. The musical reflections on the great Baroque master are unmistakably present for the attentive listener, but the ode is equally situated in the dramaturgical structure that librettist Jeroen Olyslaegers has carefully maintained. "The listener will hear clear musical reflections of my deep-rooted passion for Bach," says Neve, and he means the word 'passion' both in a musical and a personal sense.
That he deliberately seeks connection to the classical architecture of the genre should come as no surprise. The centuries-old alternation of narrative, reflection, and collective contemplation remains a powerful vehicle for taking an audience through a story that is both individual and universal. How those familiar forms relate precisely to his own musical language, Neve leaves open for now: "You can discover that during the world premiere of this composition." The statement sounds playful, but also reveals a composer convinced that some answers can only be given in the music itself.
The project's starting point lay with vocal ensemble Reflection, with which Neve had previously brought his Rain Requiem to life – a large-scale composition as a tribute to the victims of the flooding that struck southern Belgium, created in collaboration with author David Van Reybrouck. This line continues: Neve as a composer who transforms major societal traumas and questions into music with a choir at its sounding center. Looking at his trajectory, one notices that this commitment is no recent development. His first album on a major label bore the telling title Nobody is Illegal, a project whose themes sound hardly less urgent today than twenty years ago. His work with Ghetto Classics in the slums of Nairobi also testifies to an artist who consciously engages with the world around him.
Text as compass
The collaboration with Jeroen Olyslaegers was unusual: both worked independently of each other. Neve only received the text when Olyslaegers was completely finished with it. But that distance proved fruitful. "The text greatly inspired me to set the right meter," Neve explains. "Everything starts with respect for the text. From that intention, I didn't need to add an extra layer as a composer."
That restraint is characteristic of his approach. Where some composers try to bend the literary source to their will, Neve chooses to listen. The text dictates; the music follows and deepens. Nowhere is that principle clearer than in the figure of the evangelist, who appears in this work as an exhausted mother. In the classical passion tradition, the evangelist is an impersonal narrator, a conduit for the story. Here that distance is erased. The evangelist gets a distinctly human face, bringing the biblical story closer to today's lived reality. "I tried to portray this figure as naturally as possible in the music," he says, and he is explicitly pleased with the artistic collaboration with Ann PierLé for that role. That 'naturalness' is not simplicity, but rather the highest ambition: to create a figure that feels as if it should always have sounded this way.
For the performance, Neve works with Reflection and B.O.X., two ensembles with different musical backgrounds and sound cultures. In this too, the tension between tradition and contemporaneity that runs through the entire project is reflected.
The lamb as mirror
At the center stands the image of the lamb – appearing here as a teenage figure, with all the vulnerability and displacement that entails. For Neve, that symbol transcends its religious origins: "A lamb radiates unbounded innocence." It is precisely that innocence – and society's reflex to sacrifice it – that makes the Passion tradition so urgent for our times. Your Flesh and Blood The work deliberately addresses contemporary themes: climate anxiety, the pressure of social media, the tension between generations. Yet the music doesn't pretend to illustrate those themes or pass moral judgment on them. Trust in the text and in the listener suffices. "Everything begins with respect for the text," Neve says on this. From that stance emerges a work that poses questions without imposing answers, and that uses topicality not as decoration, but as an inescapable context.
Classical roots, jazzy mythology
Perhaps the most striking thing about this conversation is how resolutely Neve shakes off the identity of 'jazz musician' – a label the outside world has stuck on him for years, but one he has never fully felt as his own: "I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I've been writing classical compositions longer than I've been improvising."
That statement casts his entire career in a different light. What many see as a successful jazz career, Neve himself views more as a series of excursions from a fundamentally compositional practice: "The ground from which I make music will always depart from a compositional structure, even when I improvise." That perhaps also explains why improvisation plays barely any role in this Passion. "That indeed doesn't apply here; everything is written out."
When he situates himself within a broader musical tradition, he spontaneously refers to Bach and Mozart, composers who not only wrote their own work but also performed it: "That feels very organic to me." The pianist on stage and the composer at the writing desk are not different people to him, but two forms of expression of the same artistic identity.
Looking back on his trajectory, Neve describes it more as a logical line than as a break: "I see myself first and foremost as a classical composer who has made excursions into the jazz world during his career. This therefore feels much more like a logical next step on a path I set out on long ago." His musical heart beats especially for creating classical compositions where he can take the time to develop each voice beautifully. In an age where speed and immediate impact are often the norm, that sounds almost like an artistic manifesto.
Bach remains his permanent touchstone throughout. When asked which music he returns to when seeking inspiration, Neve answers without hesitation: "Bach." It's an answer that is at once simple and telling. Some influences don't shrink with the years, but grow.
A catharsis for the audience
What does Neve hope to bring about in his audience? "I hope that people reflect on their own position in society after listening to this work. That they experience a catharsis while hearing the creation." It's a classical goal in the most literal sense: Aristotle would recognize it.
Whether music can actually shift perspectives is a question Neve doesn't answer dogmatically, but he's not cynical about it either: "That's what I hope for, especially with such a powerful text alongside it." That remark reveals a belief in the power of art that is neither loud nor naive, but rather persistent.
is performed by vocal ensemble Reflection and B.O.X, with Ann Pierléas evangelist. Text: Jeroen Olyslaegers. Composition: Jef Neve.
Your Flesh and Blood: a passion full of people STROOM
PERFORMANCE DATES
June 18, 8:30 PM (Premiere)
As part ofRob Walbers
Location: Hangar 43, Dendermonde
June 21, 3 PM
Location: Athena Hall Antwerp
In collaboration with Humanist Association
and House of Humanity Antwerp
