KAMERKOOR JIP & ILONA DANHO
AND
MERAL POLAT & CHRIS DOYLE
DOUBLE BILL

📅 11 April 2026
🕗 20:00

Singelkerk

Singel 85

3512 VB Utrecht

Tickets to be announced soon.

Creation Songs is a concert programme by Kamerkoor JIP that seeks artistic and spiritual renewal by bringing ancient Middle Eastern creation hymns into dialogue with a contemporary Western choral sound.

At the heart of the programme is Ilona Danho, a Syrian-Swedish soprano and specialist in Syriac sacred music. Her repertoire includes ancient hymns such as Hailawothe Shmayone (“Heavenly Powers”), Daweed Ethnabi (“Prophet David”), and Oshano (“Palm Sunday”), alongside Assyrian folk songs including Num Habib (“My Beloved Sleeps”), Kefneth Kmo Zabnin (“Love Through Time”), and Nishra Tkhume (“The Eagle of the Highlands”). Themes of light, renewal, freedom, courage, and identity run through the programme.

As a co-initiator of Creation Songs, Ilona Danho brings a unique vocal sensitivity characterised by Eastern ornamentation, clarity, and emotional intensity. Together with Kamerkoor JIP, these hymns and related songs are newly arranged, allowing Eastern modal traditions and Western polyphony to meet. The result is a sound world in which ancient sacred poetry resonates within a contemporary choral context.

Kamerkoor JIP, founded by brothers Imre and Jonathan Ploeg, is known for its thematic programming and innovative approaches to choral music. The ensemble cultivates an artistic environment in which musical precision, inner development, and community are deeply connected. In Creation Songs, JIP brings choral refinement and pedagogical depth, while Ilona Danho contributes vocal heritage and modal knowledge, creating a shared musical meditation on creation as an ongoing process of renewal and awareness.

The concert will be preceded by a short spoken introduction, and translated texts will be provided to help audiences follow the multilingual hymns.

Meral Polat is a renowned actress, singer-songwriter, and theatre maker in the Netherlands. A graduate of the Amsterdam University of the Arts, she has built a distinctive multidisciplinary career spanning theatre, film, and music, and is widely praised for her powerful stage presence and expressive storytelling.

In this intimate duo setting, Meral Polat is joined by guitarist and pianist Chris Doyle. Together they present a stripped-down yet emotionally rich musical dialogue in which voice, poetry, guitar, and piano meet.

Meral Polat’s music draws deeply from Anatolian and Kurdish musical traditions, reimagined through a contemporary lens. Inspired by the poetic legacy of her father, the Kurdish poet Ali İhsan Polat, her songs channel raw emotion, collective memory, and urgent social reflection. In the duo format, these stories come closer to the listener — more fragile, more direct, and deeply human.

Chris Doyle’s sensitive and versatile playing provides both harmonic space and rhythmic grounding, moving effortlessly between folk, blues, and jazz-inflected textures. His accompaniment allows Meral’s voice and texts to unfold with clarity and intensity, creating a performance that is both musically rich and theatrically charged.

This concert offers a rare opportunity to experience Meral Polat’s work in its most distilled form — an evening of song and storytelling that explores themes of identity, memory, belonging, and resilience, and invites the audience to encounter musical heritage not as something fixed, but as a living, evolving source of expression and strength.

More information: www.meralpolat.nl