Leidsch Dagblad — Interview with Vivienne Aerts

By Theo de With, photo by Hielco Kuipers — May 8, 2021

Singer Vivienne Aerts Makes a Record with Hundreds of Female Musicians — and Chocolate

LEIDEN – Singer Vivienne Aerts lives between New York and Leiden with her partner, pastry chef Ted Steinebach. Due to the corona crisis, they have been based in their cozy house in Leiden’s city center for more than a year. But the pandemic has not stopped Aerts from starting a bold new project: creating an album together with one hundred other women.

“Last year everyone learned at breakneck speed how to work digitally,” says the 34-year-old singer. “So all these women sent me their musical contributions online, and I’m piecing them together into a beautiful album.”

Aerts originally graduated as a psychologist, but also studied at the conservatory. Combining both careers proved difficult, so she chose music full time. Today she teaches at the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Music Without Effort

She frequently collaborates with jazz pianist Kenny Werner, known for playing with Toots Thielemans and for his influential book Effortless Mastery. “He teaches making music without effort — letting it flow naturally. His method is so popular he even established his own institute at Berklee, which I helped set up,” Aerts explains. “I’ve been teaching mostly online recently, but I can’t wait to return to America.”

After late-night online lessons, she often felt the urge to create something for herself again. Her last solo album was nearly a decade ago. “I worked a lot on other people’s projects, but now it’s time for something of my own.”

Chocolate and Sound

Her husband Ted trained as a pastry chef at Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk and the Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park in New York. Together, they created the concept of “ChocoJazz”: while Ted paints with desserts, Vivienne improvises music inspired by the scents, colors, and movements. The couple has performed this multisensory show around the world, including Leiden’s Scheltema and Museum De Lakenhal, and even for an audience of 1,500 in Germany.

Conscious of abuses in the cocoa industry, Ted sought out sustainable chocolate and has worked for five years with Dutch brand Original Beans, whose motto is “One bar, one tree.” In the Congo, the company partners with the women-run Femmes de Virunga cacao collective, helping widows of the country’s conflicts support their families and send children to school.

A Global Women’s Project

Vivienne planned to travel to Congo to record sounds for the album but was prevented by Ebola and then COVID-19. Instead, she hopes to use BBC documentary recordings from the plantation. “Hardly anyone buys CDs anymore,” she says. “But if you order the album, you’ll also receive a bar of Original Beans chocolate. It makes the music a tangible product.”

The CD will contain nine songs, interwoven with soundscapes. “I listed all the female musicians I know from my work in the US and around the world — about a hundred of them. Not all appear on every track, but together they form this unique puzzle.”

Crowdfunding and presales are helping finance the project, alongside subsidies. A CD with a chocolate bar costs €20, with other packages including more chocolate. “The record will happen anyway,” Aerts says confidently. “It will be a mix of jazz, electro-pop, and cinematic music. I hope by then to be back in New York, teaching in person and performing on stage again.”

Order: The album can be ordered at https://vivienne.bandcamp.com/