Dear Sponsors, despite sudden uncertainties because of newest developments in rising numbers of infections in the Netherlands we are incredibly happy and thankful that we can have our presentation concert with live stream Saturday 10.10.2020. The audience can only be 30 people, because of newest Covid restrictions, so we decided to help the organization to sell more tickets and play two concerts, a shorter one from 18h-19h and a longer one with two sets from 20h -about 22h15. The second concert at 20h will be streamed online on our YouTube channel (I will send the link in this message) so you can watch it all and please share the link with your friends and spread the message about our CD. The sponsors who have donated for a CD will get their copy as soon as possible. The CD is also available for sale via my website, maybe you could share this link also to help us get more noticed and spread our music. Your help and donation played a huge part in the success of this wonderful result: our special double CD, dedicated to two giants of Jazz and I want to thank you via this again from the bottom of my heart for supporting us, your patience and respect also helped us a lot to get through the difficult circumstances for performing artists that this period has laid upon us. I am positive we will all get through this well and maybe come out even better after this, music will always be with us, whether live or recorded and a deeply convinced and committed musician never gives up and thanks to your help we can continue to produce the art that we love most. Thanks again kind regards
Axel Hagen for Chamber9 (feel free to contact me: [email protected])

here are some links: please share!
-live stream (our YouTube channel, please subscribe)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWiOQeYtfKAEPMbqr1NeCfg?view_as=subscriber
-order CDs:http://axelhagen.com/news-chamber9-cd/
-our website:http://axelhagen.com/chamber9-the-beauty-of-string-instruments-vocals-and-jazz-rhythm/
-Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/chamber9music

Dear friends and sponsors,

I hope you are all doing well!

I am so happy to announce that after the difficult period in terms of concerts etc., we are able to have a concert with Chamber9 on the 10th of October. That will be also the day that we officially release our CD (finally) that you helped so gratefully to make possible through your generous donation. Due to the situation around Covid we were not able to do this earlier, you know, so we are extremely happy we can release the CD with a big party/concert on the 10th of October in Voorschoten, which is close to The Hague (details at the end of this email). I will have the CD printed soon and it will be ready in the first weeks of September. The sponsors who have opted for receiving a CD will get it either by mail or personally, we will stay in touch about this.

The concert will have limited amount of visitors possible (around 75), but it will be streamed on internet live, which is a great opportunity to get exposure with our very special group to get attention for our beautiful double CD of which I am still immensely proud. I regard this project as a highlight of my musical career and the musicians and I put a huge amount of time and love in it. I am sure it can be felt through the music.

I will inform you how you can watch the live-stream and it will also be posted on our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/chamber9music). If you are in the area and want to come to the concert, i can not offer you free tickets because of the limited amount of visitors possible, but the tickets are not expensive. Here are the details for the concert:

Chamber9 live in Voorschoten, 10th of October 2020.
adres: Cultureel Centrum Voorschoten, Prinses Marijkelaan 4, 2252 HH in Voorschoten, the concert starts at 20h, finished around 22h15.

I want to thank you all again form the bottom of my heart for your patience and great support. The CD will be there soon, see you soon, maybe through the live stream...

A big hug from Axel and the rest of Chamber9

we send our Love

Dear Sponsors and friends, I hope you are all healthy and doing fine.
Who could have thought in march, when I wrote the last update, that we would still be in this lock down and that all events in the Netherlands would be cancelled until September of 2020.

Last Saturday, May 16th, would have been the date of our Presentation concert in Voorschoten and off course we had planned to have the CD ready and printed some weeks ago.

Well the good news is that all preparations, mixing, mastering, booklet design are finished exactly as planned and promised and the material could be send at any time to the factory to get it all in a tangible form, meaning: to hold the actual (double) CD's in our hands and send them out and give them to you.

I hope you all understand, that because of the current impossibility to have a concert connected to the release and creating a proper advertisement for our special product, we are now looking at a release date in the fall of 2020. As soon as we know there are concerts possible again, we will try to plan a date and let you know. If there are no concerts possible in the fall, we will have the CD printed anyway around September to be able to send them out at least to you our sponsors and have the official release concert whenever possible. I would like to apologize for the delay, but these developments were not in our hands, we were following our schedule as planned and everything is ready and just waiting to be printed.

So i hope you can still be a bit patient, the CD will come, and i can guarantee to you that you will love it, we are all very, very pleased with the result. What a group....Chamber9... we will storm the concert halls, once they open again!!!!

You can watch this little movie we made to keep you updated, we hope you enjoy. Thanks again for your wonderful support and patience. If you want to ask something or share some thoughts you can always send me an email ([email protected]).

Thank you

We send our Love

Axel, Sanna, Joan, Celia, Thomas, Estela, Angela, Victor and Olaf

Dear friends and sponsors,

I hope you are all doing fine in this period which is governed by the adjustments we have to make in our personal life caused by the precautions taken in almost all countries against the spreading of this new virus.

Therefore, I would like to start this update with a personal note.

I sometimes like to write down thoughts that come to me spontaneously in the form of little poems or short lines. It helps me to focus and be aware of my of ideas and feelings and also to work on them.

About two months ago, whilst being in a personal phase of change myself the following lines came to me:

"The change of time unwelcome truth reveals but holds the key to welcome truth for change to be."

Well...in these strange times of insecurity and huge, sudden and unforeseen impact in our personal life's, these lines express for me the awareness of possible overwhelming developments which are grounded in the flow of time, our inability to control, but also the possibility that change can bring that could be for the better, or for change to take place, regardless of it being positive or negative. The acceptance of this can help to release anxiety.
So far nobody can predict how long we will remain in this state of almost lock-down and what it will mean for our society.

Also for us musicians, mostly self-employed, these are very insecure times. The last ten years have been difficult through lack of funding of the arts by the different governments and the closing of orchestras and venues to perform. This is why crowdfunding became a prominent function to help musicians to realize their artistic ideas and your donation to our project to perform and record the music of Ellington/Strayhorn with our ensemble Chamber9 was an enormous help to make it happen.

Thank you very much again from the bottom of my heart for this.

We are very close to have our CD printed, we had a final mix, next week the recordings will be made ready to be sent to the printing factory, we started work on the booklet and I am prepared to pull through and have the CD's printed in the coming month or so, as expected and planned, as long as the printing factories will stay in business. We will think of alternative ways of delivering our music in this worst case, but I am looking so much forward in holding the actual CD's in my hand and hand it over to yours.

I hope our presentation concert on the 16th of may is not in danger and we will be able to welcome some of you there, this will all be clear in the coming weeks and I will keep you informed.

Especially in these times we need arts and music to connect us to a different world, the wonderful world of music and I am determined to deliver on the expectation and trust that your donation for our project means. We will pull through this and will have a great result in the form of our double CD: Chamber9 plays Ellington/Strayhorn.
The recordings sound beautiful and the ensemble played fantastic, you will enjoy the result.

Thanks again for your help

kind regards Axel Hagen

Dear sponsors,
I hope you are all doing fine!
The progress in the release of our CD is going according to plan.
The String - Quartet recorded an extra day on Sunday the 12th of January and they did a great job in polishing the already existing recordings.
We are all very pleased with the outcome.

This week on friday the 24th there is a first mixing day in the studio with our engineer and hopefully we get most of the work done towards a final mix. I am very much looking forward in working on the end-result of this wonderful project, I can't wait actually to hear it all again in the fantastic sound quality our engineer, Micha de Kanter, recorded us.

We were looking for a date in March or early April to organize a presentation concert for our the CD, now the following happened:

We were approached by the organization of the PJPJ (Jazz) Festival in Voorschoten, close to The Hague, to play a concert with Chamber9
on Saturday the 16th of May. We thought that this would be a great opportunity to combine this concert of about 75 min with the presentation of our CD, which will be definitely ready by then.

It would be great if you could come to this event, if you are close off course, I know we have many foreign sponsors, (which is amazing by the way). I think the CD could be ready in March as planned and we are happy to send them by post to the sponsors who went for that option, or we can deliver them personally, if possible.

I will keep you informed about the progress of the release and will contact you personally when the time comes how you would like to receive the CD(s).

We are delighted to have the opportunity for this concert in Voorschoten and hope that there will be many more, we believe that our music is special and should be heard often. Also the process of recording has really formed us into a "Band", it is no mere project anymore. The personal connection within the group is very inspiring and based on mutual affection. I am sure that Chamber9 will last for a long time as a Band and we will have many more program's to play in the future, at least I started already to work on more music.

But first let us all enjoy the fruits of this collaboration to perform the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn in our own personal way,
the Chamber9 way, made possible by all of you, our dear sponsors.

We are very grateful for your support

I will keep you informed

thank you and kind regards

Axel Hagen for "Chamber9"

Dear sponsors, we just entered into 2020 and I want to thank you again for helping us making 2019 such a successful year for our group: Chamber9.

Much of 2019 was dominated for me by this great project, performing the timeless music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn in a special setting of 9 amazing musicians. I started with the initial layout for this in January of 2019: first I made the choice of compositions to use, then a kind of storyboard how to put them together to create an ongoing, entertaining story through this great repertoire. I started arranging in early February, which took me until June. (Next to the magical compositions, the arrangements should also feature all the individual players of our ensemble.)
We had our first rehearsal with the group in June as well, so that was the deadline for me. After the summer break we focused on our concert for Daniel Slamanguitars, whose initiative to organize this wonderful event in The Hague on September 20th was the starting point of everything in the first place, a special thank you to Daniel Slaman for this opportunity to create something special.

The concert on September 20th was great and the wish to record all the music on CD, after all the effort we had put in already, led us to start this crowdfunding campaign.

Well, that was another amazing experience: finding so much support, warmth and positivity for our music, receiving 122% of our initial goal,
many wonderful comments accompanied the donations, very inspiring!

It was quite an emotional process as well, asking for support and receiving it, wow, thanks so much again from all of us. Even the "Gemeente Den Haag" sponsored a big amount, it seems that we touched a sensitive spot with our music, maybe the integrity somehow shines through and our wish to contribute to good and also entertaining music without commercial considerations in the first place is convincing, it seems like it.

We will start now as announced in the previous update with finishing the CD's (double CD, remember...).
January 6th is the first date for editing the material with our engineer, then on January 12th we will record an extra day to polish our initial recordings from November 2019. Two mixing days are planned for January and I am positive we will be able to stick to the plan to present the CD's in March during a special concert, for which you will be invited off course.

Thanks again from all of us for your support in 2019, we will make sure that 2020 is a successful year for our group and the presentation of our CD, sponsored by you, will be hopefully the starting point for much more good music and maybe many concerts. We think we can contribute a unique sound to the extended world of Jazz music, the Chamber9 sound.

A great and happy 2020 to all of you

Thank you

Axel Hagen January 1st 2020

here are two websites you can also visit about our group:
https://www.facebook.com/chamber9music/
http://axelhagen.com/chamber9-the-beauty-of-string-instruments-vocals-and-jazz-rhythm/

Dear Sponsors, we are feeling blessed with the amazing support we received from all of you for our project of recording a personal selection of compositions by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn in our own special way: the "Chamber9 way" ! The amount of trust in the integrity of our group and music is overwhelming and makes us humble and very thankful.
We will do the best we can to fulfill the high expectations of the end product.
Here follows a short layout of the "roadmap" to the (double) CD:

1. on January 12th we will record an extra day
2. sometime in late January and early February we will start with the editing/mixing and mastering of the recording, simultaneously we will start on the graphic design of the CD and contact CD printing companies for quotes on prices for printing.
3. We will start the process of acquiring a license for printing (Buma/Stemra)
4. The CD's will be printed and we will celebrate this achievement, made possible by you, during a presentation concert in The Hague, I am currently exploring possibilities for locations already. If the progress allows, it would be great to present the CD in march 2020. Sponsors who used the option of donating and receive a CD will receive it via post, personal delivery (if possible) or can collect it on the day of the presentation concert. I will keep you updated on the progress and send invitations for the concert when we are ready.

Thanks again for supporting our honest intentions to create integer music, greetings Axel Hagen "Chamber9"

Our crowdfunding is slowly coming to a close, it has been a great success already thanks to all of you. Maybe we can still generate some sponsors to help us reach our new goal, that would be fantastic and very helpful.
I added a link to a movie on Youtube which Daniel Slaman made during our recording session. It is a nice memory of the recording that took place a couple of weeks ago. We will have on extra day in early January to make some final recordings and will start mixing/editing soon after.
We hope to have the CD(s) finished sometime in early march and will present it during a concert organized by us in The Hague, we are currently exploring venues. We will keep you informed of course about the progress and you will receive invitations for the concert. Thanks again for helping us making this all possible through your generous donations.

Terrific news: We just reached 100% of the requested 4500,- euros.
We received a gift of 25% from the community of the City of The Hague and together with all the incredible donations (thank you all very much) we reached our goal with still 17 days to go!!!
These remaining 17 days we would like to use to go for a new goal of 5500,- euros. It would be amazing if we reach the new amount and be able to put extra attention to the mix, booklet and all the little extra expenses that go in a production like this with 9 people involved !!! The initial amount of 4500,- would have been the bare minimum to realize the CD with still the need to raise money somehow to get it all done: Studio, mixing, editing, mastering, graphic design, Buma/Stemra , travel, etc. With the new goal in sight we can relax and focus completely on our artistic goals. Everything will go in the polished production of this very special project!
Thanks again all involved also for the uplifting and heartwarming comments with the donations, we are all incredibly grateful to receive this amount of trust in our music and believe in our integrity. I am sure we won't disappoint!!!

Yesterday (20.11.) was the last day today of recording with Chamber9: Olaf Tarenskeen, Sanna van Vliet, Thomas Winther Andersen, Ángela Moya, Cèlia Torres Ruiz, Victor Flores Silva, Estela Briceño Mezquita, Joan Terol Amigo and myself. I feel blessed with the great atmosphere, musicianship, dedication and friendship that we experience in this group, the result is amazing: we recorded the material for our double CD with two times 45 minutes of compositions by Ellington/Strayhorn in a unique setting of string-instruments, rhtyhm section and vocals. There is no group like this one and the beauty of sound we achieve is quite something... the crowdfunding for the project is going well (51% with 3 more weeks to go), can't wait for the CD(s) to be published, we expect this to happen sometime in early 2020, thank you all for the support of our music.

We are very pleased with the progress of the crowdfunding so far, fantastic that after just a few days we are at almost 25%. We will start to record next Sunday and will be in the studio till Wednesday, we will post more info about our progress next week. Thanks again.