Eef van Breen

[b]Eef van Breen[/b] (b. 3 January 1978, Westerbork) is a Dutch jazz trumpeter, valve trombone/bugle player, composer, arranger, vocalist, and band leader. Working solo and with a rotating cast of fellow musicians in the [a=Eef van Breen Group], he frequently collaborates with theatrical directors, choreographers, filmmakers, writers, and artists from other fields. Breen wrote music on commissions from [a=Berliner Ensemble], [a=Toneelgroep Amsterdam], [a=Duo Bilitis], and [l=Toneelschuur] theater, among others; his cello composition [i]Flavours[/i] was premiered by [a=Amber Docters van Leeuwen] at New York's [l=Carnegie Hall]. Eef van Breen has performed at the [l=Atlanta Jazz Festival] (USA), the [l=Barbican Centre] (London), and many prestigious international events and venues. In 2010, Eef van Breen wrote the score and served as music director for [a=Floris Schönfeld]'s [b][i]ʼuʼ[/i][/b] — the "first authentic Klingon opera on Earth," set in a fictional "Klingon" language spoken by the eponymous alien species in [i]Star Trek[/i]. (In the sci-fi franchise lore, Klingons were avid opera aficionados, and their atonal, aggressive, almost cacophonic music was a subject of an ongoing, persistent joke throughout the series.) [b][i]ʼuʼ[/i][/b] is based on the epic legend of "Kahless the Unforgettable", a messianic figure in Klingon's fictional history, with a libretto co-written by [a=Marc Okrand] (linguist and "conlanger" who invented [i]Klingon[/i] language in the early 1980s for [l=Paramount Pictures]), and music performed on "indigenous" Klingon musical instruments, including percussion, wind, and strings (designed by [a=Xavier Van Wersch], who also came up with detailed microtonal music system, outlined in his unpublished paper, "[i]A comprehensive introduction to Klingon music theory[/i]"). The opera premiered in The Hague in September 2010.