Birds of Paradise Festival
March 9th to March 21st
2026
Mon
March
9th
Zola Jesus
with
Spaceship Ensemble
at
Pandora
Mon
March
16th
CocoRosie
at
Hertz
Wed
March
18th
Tony Njoku
with
Spaceship Ensemble
at
Grote Zaal
Thur
March
19th
caroline
at
Pandora
Fri
March
20th
Thomas Azier
at
Hertz
Sat
March
21st
Bird’s Nest
with:
Glass Museum
Claire Dickson
Cosmic Bride
Dronechoir
Doriene Marselje
at
Cloud Nine, Club Nine
Bird’s Nest ft. Glass Museum, Claire Dickson, Cosmic Bride, Dronechoir, Doriene Marselje
at Cloud Nine, Club Nine
Sat
March 21st
Bird’s Nest is the place where you discover new music, emerging artists, and unique collaborations first. So if you love exploring new sounds, this is the right place for you. At Bird’s Nest, you discover talent before it takes flight.
Glass Museum
Belgian duo Glass Museum are masters at experimenting with influences from jazz and pop music, while incorporating orchestral arrangements and the mathematical precision of electronic music. Think Gogo Penguin and BadBadNotGood, infused with the electronic influences of Jon Hopkins and Floating Points. It is no coincidence that French techno producer and DJ Laurent Garnier named their album 4N4Log City one of the best albums of 2025.
Claire Dickson
American artist Claire Dickson creates an experimental, ambient art-pop universe in which jazz, field recordings, synthesizers, pedals, and acoustic instruments converge. Her versatile voice and wide-ranging vocal techniques evoke a blend of Björk and Fiona Apple, as she weaves natural sounds, electronics, and found audio into atmospheric, shape-shifting compositions.
Claire Dickson will perform music from Balance in duo with FúChén (Floating Dust). The two weave together a live remix and deconstruction of the music with electronics, synth, and voice.
FúChén (Floating Dust) is the sonic identity of Jiahao Li, hailing from Shanxi, China. Growing up on the Loess Plateau, a land constantly eroded and rebuilt, he transforms its dust, memories, and lingering echoes into sound. Witnessing the drastic transformations of his hometown, he came to understand the ghostly nature of memory: flickering, blurred, and persistent — drifting like dust, accumulating and dispersing with time. In his work, the tension between analog warmth and digital precision becomes a metaphor. Through granular synthesis, he lets the coarse and the exact rub against each other at the edge of perception as if memory, once recalled, is already being swallowed by forgetting.
Cosmic Bride
Cosmic Bride is the avant-pop project of Natalja Chareckaja, a Lithuanian-born composer, vocalist, and producer based in Rotterdam. Her music blends contemporary classical , jazz, and avant-pop creating sound that defies traditional genre boundaries. Under her avant-pop project Cosmic Bride, she explores intersections of music and technology through emotionally charged compositions and immersive performances.
Her new work Hidden Gem is conceived as an immersive concert experience in which voice, harp, vibraphone, and electronics move through space like celestial bodies in orbit. Cosmic Bride creates a landscape that feels at once intimate and cosmic — inviting the audience to move within sound and listen from shifting perspectives.
Dronechoir
The evening opens with Dyers’ all-female drone choir: a social performance experiment that brings together women from diverse cultures, ethnicities, and communities. This unique ad hoc choir creates a powerful sonic experience in which voices seamlessly blend, while singing as they move through space.
You can also become part of this special performance. In a 20-minute a cappella performance, you will sing long, sustained tones (drones) while walking through TivoliVredenburg, receiving musical and movement instructions in real time via your earphones from Bec Plexus (No Plexus). As a choir member, you connect with the audience in a truly surprising way. No prior rehearsal is required; all practical information will be shared with you by email in advance.
Doriene Marselje
Doriene Marselje takes you along in a live performance in which the harp is pushed far beyond its image. With raw grooves, pronounced rhythms, and electronic effects, she builds a constantly shifting sonic landscape. The music is physical and immediate—at times hypnotic, at times sharp and unpredictable. Don’t expect gentle harp sounds, but a concert that seeks out boundaries, pushes them, and draws the audience fully into the moment. Alongside music from Interference—“an imaginative album full of electronica” (de Volkskrant)—we hear the first sounds of a new phase in her creative process: the combination of harp and a Buchla synthesizer.
Thomas Azier - PANORAMA
at Hertz
Fri
March 20th
Thomas Azier presents PANORAMA, a live performance in which music and visuals alternate and intertwine. His sound moves between pop, electropop, and art pop, creating shows with a dreamy, cinematic atmosphere. Azier’s music is often described as urgent and deeply moving, and with PANORAMA he takes this emotional intensity even further.
With his distinctive blend of pop songwriting, cinematic composition, and poignant melodies, Thomas Azier has firmly established himself within the European music landscape. His willingness to experiment was evident at the first Birds of Paradise festival in 2022, where he presented Glossolalia, featuring an eight-voice women’s choir.
Azier has won numerous awards, including two Edison Awards, and has released six albums that articulate his singular vision of pop music. His songs Red Eyes and The Dreamer In Her were used by YSL for La Nuit de l’Homme, while Love, Disorderly appears on the soundtrack of the American blockbuster The Equalizer 3.
His influence on the European pop scene is also evident in his work as a writer and producer for artists such as Stromae, Faber, Morpheus, Hang Youth, and Anouk.
PANORAMA is a humanist portrait of life on the edge, where illness, desire, fear, and hope coexist and shape one another. The music is performed live with synthesist Annelotte Coster, saxophonist Maarten Hogenhuis, violist Stefan Wellens, and cellist Sam Faes.
caroline
at Pandora
Thur
March 19th
The eight-piece English band caroline operates at the intersection of folk rock and post-rock, creating music that breathes slowly, grinds, and unfolds unpredictably. Whispered, almost spoken-word vocals float through layered compositions in which not only guitar and drums, but also strings and woodwinds, play a central role.
After their self-titled debut in 2022, caroline 2 was released in March 2025, an album in which the band further explores and deepens their dynamic range. Fragile melodies and still passages sit alongside sudden eruptions and moments of disorientation. Music magazine OOR wrote aptly: “caroline overwhelms and unsettles, while simultaneously containing beautiful melodies.”
For those who enjoy being carried away by melancholy, nuance, and adventure.
Tony Njoku x Spaceship Ensemble
at Grote Zaal
Wed
March 18th
with
Spaceship Ensemble
London-based composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Tony Njoku blends electronic, ambient, and classical music. In doing so, he has emerged as a distinctive voice within contemporary experimental music, earning praise from leading magazines such as Pitchfork, The Guardian, Dazed, and The Quietus.
On his latest album, All Our Knives Are Always Sharp, Njoku collaborates with artists including Tricky, GAIKA, Ghostpoet, Coby Sey, James Massiah, and Space Afrika. Across these new tracks, he explores themes of spirituality and resistance, carried by electronic abstraction, falsetto-driven vocals, and cinematic atmospheres.
For this special evening, Njoku joins forces with the Spaceship Ensemble. In this new context, the songs gain added depth and dramatic tension, as his cinematic compositions are expanded and intensified through the ensemble’s rich, layered sound.
CocoRosie
at Hertz
Mon
March 16th
Little death wishes
For over twenty years, sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady have formed a uncompromising and idiosyncratic duo at the forefront of alternative pop and experimental music. Their work emerges from sisterhood, love, and adversity, serving as a powerful counterpoint in an increasingly streamlined cultural landscape. With playfulness and humor as their tools, they break taboos, challenge social norms, and address themes such as human rights and identity.
CocoRosie’s eccentric lo-fi pop combines poetic, often elusive lyrics with timeless harmonies, toy-inspired beats, classical instrumentation, and genre-crossing rhythms. Sierra Casady, classically trained opera singer and theater performer, and Bianca Casady, poet, theater director, and visual artist, weave music together with theatrical movement, fashion, and contemporary art into a multidimensional oeuvre that embodies both the beauty and the pain of shared human experiences.
This concert focuses on their new album Little Death Wishes, their long-awaited eighth studio release. In open and vulnerable songs, a layered, kaleidoscopic narrative unfolds, exploring generations of women, love and loss, and the precariousness of being human. The work distills everything CocoRosie stands for to its essence: transforming pain into insight, turning kitsch and cliché into new truths, and allowing sisterhood to grow into a form of strength and resistance.
Zola Jesus x Spaceship Ensemble
at Pandora
Mon
March 9th
with
Spaceship Ensemble
American singer-songwriter and producer Zola Jesus immerses listeners in a world of monumental sound and emotional intensity. Trained as an opera singer and blessed with an extraordinary voice, she effortlessly balances neoclassical, industrial, and art-pop influences. Her music evokes associations with Kate Bush, Siouxsie, Florence + The Machine, and Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins.
Zola Jesus has previously collaborated with artists such as Orbital, Fever Ray, and filmmaker David Lynch. For Birds of Paradise, she engages in a one-time special collaboration with the Hague-based Spaceship Ensemble, composing a 45-minute song cycle for voice, string quartet, and French horn specifically for this occasion.
Alongside this Dutch premiere, she will also perform solo material from her rich back catalogue. Audiences can expect an intense and layered live experience where darkness and beauty intertwine. On her most recent album, Arkhon, she reveals a vulnerable side — a thread she carries convincingly onto the stage.