DJ and producer San Holo has fans all over the world, lives and works in LA and has even played Coachella. Multiple times! But he is also Sander van Dijck from Zoetermeer. We invited him to the Mauritshuis to write a song about one of our paintings, and discovered that he could have been an art historian...
One painting, one act, one great song. In View the Mauritshuis with Your Ears we ask well-known musicians to write a piece of music inspired by a work in our collection.
About San Holo
Sander van Dijck fell in love with punk and alt-rock, learned to play the guitar and make noise of his own. His teenage years were spent hopping from band to band, and he even studied guitar at Rotterdam’s Codarts University of the Arts. Ironically, this was also where he was first introduced to digital production software. Fascinated by the freedom that creating electronic music offered, he realized he didn’t need a full band to bring his exact vision to life. Like many producers of his age, his success started with remixes. His rework of Dr. Dre’s The Next Episode exploded on Soundcloud, amassing more than 234 million views on YouTube to date.
Whether playing a massive crowd at Coachella or headlining at Red Rocks Amphitheater, every San Holo show feels like an intimate experience.
San Holo's selection
Wandering through the museum, San Holo was looking for something that would move him without him particularly knowing why. He found exactly what he was looking for in The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius. He’s mad about birds (he has his own label called Bitbird and his fans call themselves ‘San Holo's bird’s nest’), but what really caught his imagination was the little chain around the bird’s leg. ‘Aren’t we all this little bird in some way?’ he mused.
About The Goldfinch
A goldfinch is sitting on its feeder, chained by its foot. Goldfinches were popular pets, as they could be taught tricks like drawing water from a bowl with a miniature bucket. The Goldfinch was painted by Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt's most talented student. Weirdly enough, San Holo could sense the connection between the two painters. This is one of the few works we know by Fabritius, due to his untimely death during an explosion in his hometown of Delft. And that's what makes this little bird extra special.
With thanks to
View the Mauritshuis with Your Ears is made possible by NN Group.
