A hot summer night with a couple of cool drinks and a superb view on the Antwerp harbor is a perfect setting to have an informal talk with the core creative team and take stock. Roughly ten months before show time, it’s important to have these kind of meetings every now and then, to see where everybody’s at. Time is ticking; planning well ahead is crucial.

But our first toast goes out to Pieter, who has reason to celebrate, B.O.X gets structurally funded by the Flemish government for a period of five years. Which has also repercussions for the funding of ‘On Moonlight and Rain’. The budget is safe and sound. We’re not running into budgetary issues during production. A great relief when you have fifteen people on the payroll for a couple of weeks.

Over to the song writing planning. The idea is to have five songs worked out in demo by the end of the summer, so everybody involved will get a better sense of what will happen musically. In the end, we’re creating a music show, so the music will determine a lot of decisions on other fronts. Right now, Nel and Bram are the only two people who know the music. In this early phase of songwriting we’re still fragile, so we like to keep our ideas close. We can only share them with the outside world when we’re satisfied ourselves. In other words: we decide when the music is ‘ready’. Setting a deadline makes this process more efficient; it simply helps getting things done.

Next up are the arrangements for the recording sessions of A Folksongbook. It’s a great opportunity to invite Valgeir for a listen and introduce him to the two bands and our joint aesthetic. We’ve been performing A Folksongbook with B.O.X since 2009, so there’s a whole world of sound, lush with baroque colors and warm vocal harmonies to explore.

We’re concluding with sales and promotion. It’s a good thing to know we’re able to create the show, budget wise. And it’s also great that we got a team of fine musicians and designers ready. Cool that the song material takes shape. But once the production is going to be out there, we’d like to have the show staged a couple of times. That means: promotion. Again, planning ahead is crucial in the music industry. We discuss strategy for season 2017 and 2018. Basically, the premiere at the end of season 2017 needs to showcase for the next.